


Five Returns

by Bohemienne



Series: Ten Steps [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 45000 words of soulcrushing angst and then 100 words of teeth-rotting sweetness at the end, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Feels, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Choking, Dark, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Frottage, HYDRA Trash Party, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Sadism, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Masochist Steve Rogers, Oral Sex, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Past Sexual Abuse, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Repressed Memories, Rimming, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, unless you count crying as plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:22:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes limp against the bookshelf, only Bucky’s metal hand is clenched around his throat holding him in place, and Bucky’s grinning that awful grin. Like this, too, was a fight, and he’s just won.</p><p>  <i></i><br/><b>(Please note archive warnings and read tags carefully. Steve & Bucky do NOT have a healthy relationship for a large part of this fic and Bucky is in a seriously bad place.)</b><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. v.

**Author's Note:**

> aka, Five Times Steve Rogers Tries to Help Bucky Recover from The Winter Soldier and It Ends in Sex and Tears.
> 
> Follow-up to [Five Goodbyes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7773709).
> 
>  
> 
> <3 [Bohemienne](http://starandshield.tumblr.com)

**v.**

Steve Rogers doesn’t have a deathwish. He tells himself this as he wanders the streets of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC after the bars close, sleeplessness a feral thing inside him, scratching and pacing. He tells himself this with his ballcap pulled low and the collar of his blue jacket turned up and his shoulders hunched as he keeps his hands in his jean pockets. As he watches the two men climbing into their Uber at the corner, laughing and kissing and hand in hand; listens to the last stragglers spill from the hookah bar; weaves his way past a bachelorette party and a limo full of diplomats’ children in skintight Gucci and Dior.

Steve doesn’t have a deathwish because he’s already died a dozen times. Seen everything he cared about die around him. When he’s being honest with himself, which he never is, he’s pretty sure that he’s dead still.

 _There’s no way he stuck around DC,_ Natasha had said. _He’s probably in a safehouse halfway around the world by now._ But Natasha hadn’t seen the look on his face just before Steve fell. He remembered. God, it twisted a serrated knife in Steve’s heart, thinking about that face, but he remembered. There was still a Bucky inside the Winter Soldier, and all Steve can do is believe that Bucky will win out.

He’d always been a fighter. Fighting for the Commandos, for Steve, for the life they thought they were meant to have. Not that they hadn’t fucked up plenty along the way. _There’s no fairytale ending for us,_ they’d said, but against all odds, they were both awake and alive. A million miles away from they life that they once shared.

What was that, if not a fairytale? Maybe it’s just a curse. A purgatory they can never leave.

A shadow catches Steve’s eye from the whispering trees that line Hillyer Place. The shadowy branches rake through the weak amber light put out by the streetlamps, turning everything sinister and shifting. Steve pauses; in his jacket pocket, he clenches a fist, and for a moment regrets there’s no shield slung on his back. He doesn’t have a deathwish, but he’s just taken down a seventy-year old fascist organization. They’re bound to have stragglers more than willing to take him on in the dark alleys of DC. If Bucky were here, he’d be rolling his eyes right now, telling him what a goddamned reckless idiot he was.

If Bucky were here . . .

Steve shakes his head. No sense wondering about all that.

And then he turns the corner into his building’s alleyway and _sees_ him.

Steve chokes back a gasp, convinced his eyes are playing a joke on him. The man standing in the service entrance archway, unmoving, is only barely outlined by the weak spill of the safety lighting. It could be anyone. Probably no one Steve wants to meet at three am. Maybe Steve just wants it so badly to be him he’s willing to see anything.

But no—he’d know that frosty gaze anywhere, even if the warmth he loved so much that always lurked behind it is gone. He’s standing, legs spread shoulder-width, shoulders drawn forward and his hands fists at his sides. That metal arm (how many nights had Steve lain awake, wondering what awful pain he’d endured receiving _that_ ) is hidden beneath a jacket sleeve and gloves. But Steve can’t forget the way it felt squeezing at his throat. He won’t forget everything he’s capable of.

Steve takes a step down the alley; the figure doesn’t flinch or back away. It’s not a great sign, but it could be worse, Steve supposes. He reaches up, moving slowly, deliberately, and pulls his ballcap off.

“Bucky,” he says.

A muscle twitches at the man’s jaw, beneath his stubble, but he says nothing. It’s seventy years of silence, opening up between them like a yawning chasm. It pulls Steve down, crushing him, reminding him just how unprepared he is for this. How he’ll never be prepared.

“Do you know who I am?” Steve asks. He’s trying so hard to keep his voice low, but he’s desperate, his heart wrenching wide open. He wants so badly for Bucky to remember, and that wanting makes him feel awful, selfish. Like all he cares about is grasping at their _before_.

Slowly, Bucky nods.

Steve’s trembling inside, but he’s got to be strong. Once upon a time, Bucky looked to him for orders, after all. He takes another step closer, and he’s vulnerable, so vulnerable that if Bucky wanted, he could kill him right there. But he’s bared his neck to Bucky before and survived.

“Are you hungry?” Steve asks, his voice failing him. “Do you need something to eat?”

Bucky takes a step back, retreating deeper into the entranceway.

Steve stops and holds up his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to—to do anything you don’t want me to do.” His throat is tight, so tight, it’s like he’s got a noose around it. “All you have to tell me is yes or no. Can I take another step?”

There’s a long moment where Bucky’s staring, not quite at him really, but around him. His chin tips up, defiant, and it makes Steve’s heart flutter. Only a shadow of the smartass, bold Bucky he knew. But he’ll take it. Bucky finally nods again.

“Okay. Great.” Steve moves toward him. “I’m—I’m gonna open the door. If you want— _if_ you want—you can follow me up to my apartment. I can get you something to eat. Somewhere to sleep.”

There’s a long moment between them that presses like a barrel into Steve’s back. Then Bucky moves to the side to let Steve pass.

Steve’s hands are trembling as he fumbles with his building keys. It takes him several tries to slot it properly, and he can feel Bucky’s eyes on him the whole time. Finally he wrestles the door open, and heads slowly up the old craftsman stairs. At first he’s not even sure Bucky’s following, but when he looks back, Bucky’s there, his feet treading softly as a cat’s on the creaky wood. Time seems to stretch out forever as Steve climbs, taking his time, unwilling to leave Bucky behind ever again. But at last they reach the top floor, and Steve opens up his apartment.

Bucky moves like a ghost into the living room and stands there. His gaze is maybe scanning the bookshelves, maybe the photographs on the wall, but Steve couldn’t say for sure. There’s a picture of Bucky hidden in there somewhere, but only one. Steve couldn’t bear to have more than that, staring at him from another lifetime away. He wonders if Bucky sees it. If he’d even recognize himself if he did.

Steve heads into the kitchen to fix a sandwich; realizes as he pulls the meat and cheese out of the fridge that he’s grabbing the ingredients for a Reuben. Bucky’s favorite. He guesses he’s been keeping the ingredients on hand, like he’d always hoped for this. Maybe he should feel ashamed for being so desperate, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything but the fact that Bucky’s finally here. With him.

He brings the sandwich into the living room and sets it down on the coffee table. “It’s okay if you want to sit down.”

Bucky looks toward the sandwich, then slowly shakes his head.

“Not hungry? Okay. It’s fine.” Steve’s smiling so hard it hurts. It makes the muscles in his face tremor. “You can sleep, if you want. I’ll put fresh sheets on my bed for you, and I can take the couch.”

Another shake.

“Or you can take off your jacket, your hat. I can find you something more comfortable to wear. You’re probably a size . . .”

Steve tapers off, blushing. He remembers Bucky’s clothing sizes exactly. They’d stayed constant even as Steve’s had quadrupled.

Bucky makes no move to undress.

Steve leans back against the bookshelf, out of ideas. He must have come here for a reason. Even if he doesn’t quite know what the reason is yet, something in him remembers Steve, something in him brought him here, seeking shelter, maybe, or memories . . .

Steve swallows and braces himself, like he’s expecting a punch. “Do you remember me?”

The muscle ripples along Bucky’s jaw once more. He’s not gaunt—Hydra must have been feeding him in some fashion—but there’s a sharpness to his features that hadn’t been there before the war. Everything about him looks honed like a weapon, and it hurts. It hurts.

“You’re Steve.”

That voice tears a rift inside Steve. He’s overjoyed and crushed and wrecked all at the same time. It’s all he can do not to throw his arms around Bucky, hold him close, tell him everything will be all right. “Is there . . . anything else you remember?”

Bucky winces, like whatever he’s remembering pains him. It makes Steve ache inside, too.

“It’s okay. You don’t—you don’t have to do anything, say anything.” Steve bites his lower lip. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

The silence stretches so long between them, it’s bound to snap.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” Bucky says finally.

The flatness of his tone puts Steve on guard. It’s not that he thinks Bucky wants to hurt him. But he’s already come too close to being wrong about Bucky. About just how strong Hydra’s grip on him really was.

“I remember . . .”

Steve leans forward, hesitant. “You remember what?”

In a blink, Bucky is in front of him, metal forearm pinning him against the bookshelf by the throat. Steve goes limp. He can’t fight back, doesn’t want to fight back. Bucky smells clean, but there’s an edge to it, and a savage energy to his movements as he presses against Steve. Steve’s head tips back against the shelving that divides the living room from the kitchen and he doesn’t move, doesn’t want to do anything but feel Bucky so close to him, and he hates himself for even thinking about it. It’s not the Bucky he knew and loved. He’s barely even human, right now. But Steve remembers his weight; the press of Bucky’s knee between his thighs.

He doesn’t remember the way Bucky’s pupils widen until his eyes are almost black, or his upper lip curls, rabid.

Then the press of the metal arm eases, if only by a fraction. Bucky’s face slackens, and his pupils contract. Water lines the rim of his eyes, and he blinks, confused.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Steve whispers.

It seems to have the opposite effect. Bucky jams his forearm harder into Steve’s larynx, and black spots speckle Steve’s vision. Steve starts to raise one hand, moving as slowly as possible, more a sign of surrender. But with his right hand, Bucky shoves it back down.

A pressure is building between them, a hurricane whirling. If Steve moves, he fears it might break free. Staring into Bucky’s eyes makes him want to break, though. Having those eyes on him again—he’d do about anything.

Bucky’s right hand raises to Steve’s face. His fingertips trace his hairline, down his forehead, his temple, to the shell of his ear. It’s rough and graceless, but Steve can’t imagine wanting any other touch.

“I remember this,” Bucky says, his tone ragged. His thumb scrapes over Steve’s lower lip, stoking an ember deep inside. As rough as the pad of his thumb is—and Steve can’t imagine what horrors have made it so callused—it feels so good it hurts. “Is this right?”

Steve’s throat bumps up against the metal plates as he tries to swallow. “Um . . .” He’s thinking of pub bathrooms and a one-room flat in Brooklyn. Thinking of chilly tents and alleyways. He’s thinking of kissing, kissing until their mouths throbbed, of the razor-sharp line of desire and fear of discovery pressing down on everything they did. Bucky isn’t wrong, exactly. But he also doesn’t think those moments are at all what Bucky means.

“Answer me,” Bucky growls from somewhere deep. His eyes are hard and cold and dark as glaciers.

Steve gasps for breath before answering. “You used to—I mean, we used to—but it wasn’t like we—I mean, I don’t know what you remember, and I—”

Bucky’s free hand spreads against Steve’s chest, flesh fingers perched so gently on his sternum even as the metal arm digs into his larynx. Steve’s body lurches in response, and he hates himself for it. He shouldn’t be feeling this. Bucky is barely himself, probably not even aware of all the baggage Steve’s tying to this act, probably has no idea the way it’s making him react and stoking a fire in him . . .

“I remember this,” Bucky says.

His right hand trails down Steve’s chest, down his stomach.

“Oh, god.” Steve shudders. He’s no longer able to suppress it; he’s definitely getting hard. “Okay, Buck, you can let me go now. I think we both could use some sleep.”

Bucky answers by shoving his hand—rough, artless—down the waistband of Steve’s jeans.

 _Oh, fuck._ Steve brings his hands up and presses his palms into Bucky’s chest to shove him away. Bucky staggers back, blank stare continuing, not even looking at him. Steve can’t breathe. There’s no air for him to draw in. The soft velvet skin of his groin, just above the base of his shaft, feels like it’s burning where Bucky began to touch him. His boxer briefs are too rough, his jeans are too tight, his head is spinning too much for him to know what to do—

And then Bucky is pressing against him again, mouth crushing against Steve’s, hands fumbling at Steve’s belt, and Steve no longer has the discipline to resist.

Bucky tastes minty and fresh—wherever he’s been staying, he’s taken care of himself—and is just as warm and wonderful as he was seventy years ago. It’s making Steve dizzy, all the memories his mouth is unearthing. A squeaky Murphy bed and a French farmhouse. He doesn’t want to stop him. He can’t stop him. Bucky is easing Steve’s aching cock out of his jeans and gripping it like a vise and deep in the back of his throat, Steve is moaning, his balls are so tight and his skin is on fire with Bucky’s touch.

“This meant something,” Bucky says, practically snarling it in Steve’s ear. Like it infuriates him. “We meant something to each other.”

Steve doesn’t have the heart to explain the whole messy truth. “You don’t have to do this, Buck. No one’s making you do this now, you don’t have to—”

Bucky’s stare has warmed, but it’s no less piercing than before. “You want me to do this.”

Steve doesn’t think it’s a question, but hoarsely, he hears himself say, “Yes.”

 _This is wrong,_ Steve tells himself, as Bucky’s hand tugs, dry and painful, at his shaft. _This is wrong this is wrong this is wrong, he doesn’t know what he’s doing._ But Steve’s body refuses to listen. Part of him wants to cry at how good it feels to be this close to Bucky again, so much that he can almost imagine that it really is Bucky in there, touching him like he used to, for all the reasons he used to, and he doesn’t think he could stop for anything in the world. But it isn’t Bucky. He doesn’t know who he is, who either of them are—

Bucky bares his teeth, that horrible, all too certain smile taking over his face as he strokes. The same smile he wore as he fired a bullet into Steve’s gut. But now it’s Steve who’s lost, and before he can stop himself he’s coming all over Bucky’s hand, over his jeans, over the space between them, and the blissful emptiness that accompanies it feels like it could swallow up them both. He cries out—he must have cried out—and goes limp against the bookshelf, only Bucky’s metal hand is clenched around his throat holding him in place, and Bucky’s grinning that awful grin. Like this, too, was a fight, and he’s just won.

Finally, Bucky’s hold on him eases, and Steve slides down to the floor. He’s a boneless heap, or so it feels. Sated and still hungry all at once. Bucky looms over him, looking down, expression dark. Calmly, Bucky tugs at the hem of his t-shirt, eyes not leaving Steve, and wipes his hand there. Then he crouches in front of Steve and studies him with a curious blankness.

“Why do I remember this?” Bucky asks. No inflection. Just a calm question, as if it were all so simple.

Steve shook his head. His throat feels raw, as if he’s been screaming. Was he? “I don’t know.”

Bucky tilts his head to one side. It’s almost innocent, and that hurts Steve most of all.

Steve pulls his knees up and props his hands on top of them. “I mean—I don’t know why this, in particular. But you . . . you and I, we used to be . . .”

“You loved me,” Bucky says calmly.

Steve closes his gaping mouth and swallows. God, he’s all dried out, all wrung out. Slowly, he nods.

Bucky presses his lips together like he’s absorbing this information. His eyes never stray. “Did I love you?”

The question coils up inside Steve’s head like a snake. There’s no good way to answer this. He can only be as honest as he dares. “I think so.”

Another pause as Bucky processes. Then his shoulders slump and he sinks onto his knees. His eyes go blank, looking somewhere inside.

“Bucky. Buck. Please stay with me. It’s going to be okay.” Steve pushes up to his knees, hurriedly refastens his jeans, then reaches for Bucky’s shoulders to embrace him, but Bucky shoves him away, sprawling him across the hardwood floor. Bucky’s wrapped his arms tight around himself, and the nails of his right hand are digging into his own shoulderblade, the metal one, like he wants to tear it off.

“I should have killed you,” Bucky says.

Steve presses a hand to his sternum. It feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him. “So—so why didn’t you?”

“I remembered.” Bucky’s curling tighter and tighter on himself. “Your hands were on my face, and you were telling me it was okay. You told me that as long as we loved each other, you didn’t care about anything else in the world.”

Steve’s stomach curdles. He knows exactly the moment Bucky means. They’d been eighteen years old, and Bucky’s father had caught them necking in the bedroom Bucky shared with his younger sister while she was at a school dance. Bucky was already graduated and desperate for an excuse to escape home, but couldn’t afford it. Neither of them could.

Bucky paid an awful price that night. Steve tried to fight off Mr. Barnes, but he’d been too weak. Was always too weak. Mr. Barnes had flung him into the corner of the room and Steve couldn’t do anything but watch as he folded the leather belt up in his hands.

And Bucky just stoically endured it. Acted like he liked it, even. That it didn’t faze him a bit to get whipped until the back of his shirt shredded and stained with red. Steve was the only one crying; Bucky just sat there and smiled like this had always been his plan. Which only made Mr. Barnes angrier, in the end. Made him exhaust himself, sagging against the dresser, red-faced and drenched in sweat.

He screamed at them to get out. To never come back to his house. It was all the excuse Bucky needed.

They spent the night curled up on a fire escape, Steve tearing his own shirt into strips of cotton to press against the deep lacerations in Bucky’s back. He said as long as they were together, they could face anything. And he’d meant it.

But how little imagination he had back then. How little he knew of what the world was willing to make them face.

“Did you want to kill me?” Steve asks.

Bucky’s shoulder quake with something like a laugh. “That isn’t how it works,” he says.

“How what works?”

“Wanting.” Bucky goes still. “What I want is beside the point.”

Steve feels heavy, so heavy, with guilt. Somehow, some way, this is all his fault, and he’s done nothing but make it worse ever since he learned Bucky was alive. He brought Bucky back to himself—but at what cost? He can’t even begin to imagine what’s running through Bucky’s head. And then, surrendering to him just now, when he doesn’t even know if it was Bucky touching him or someone else entirely . . .

“It matters now,” Steve says softly.

Bucky’s arms slip down from his shoulders. He starts to turn his head to look at Steve, but stops halfway there. “What I want.” He tests the words out. “I—I want to understand.”

Steve stretches out and nestles a hand on his shoulder. “Please. I want to help.”

Bucky tenses at his touch. It was a mistake, and Steve knows it—the last thing he needs is to be touched. Who knows what Hydra did to him to keep him in line—Mr. Barnes surely had nothing on them. He starts to pull his hand away.

But Bucky catches him by the wrist with the ferocious grip of his metal hand. Stares at him with that predator’s gaze once more.

In an instant, Bucky is on top of him, pinning his hands down, kissing him like he’s waging a war. It’s more anger than passion, all teeth and forceful tongue and the violent weight of his torso on Steve’s, the grind of his knees into Steve’s thighs as he straddles him. Steve doesn’t want to like it. They’d always been so tender with each other—

No. Not always. Especially not after he’d freed Bucky from the Hydra camp. But even then, Bucky had wanted Steve to be the one who was rough, to choke him and pin him down and shove into him without aid. Their last night together ripples through his mind. God, it was one of the first things Steve dreamed of when he came out of the ice. He remembers how Bucky swore and writhed beneath him, begging for more.

But now Bucky’s kisses are like razorblades, slicing him up inside. Bucky’s erection digs into Steve’s thigh. Already Steve feels himself stirring again, his traitor metabolism making it all too easy, and he’s telling himself no, no, he’s taken too much advantage of Bucky as it is, Bucky just needs a warm bed and a shower and food and a friend, _just_ a friend—

“Please stay,” Steve gasps. “Please don’t leave me this time.”

Bucky sits up, resting painfully on Steve’s cock at an awkward angle, and stares at him. That vacant stare, the one he wore when Steve had seen him kill. Bucky raises his right hand into a fist and curls it into his chest, like he’s ready to defend himself if he needs.

“I won’t hurt you. I won’t—”

Bucky’s breathing heavy as his eyes dart every which way. And then his face turns soft, slack with anguish. Suddenly he looks terrified.

“No,” Bucky whispers, then repeats it to himself. “No, no.”

Steve curls his palm around Bucky’s thigh. “Please. You’re safe here.”

Bucky’s eyes squeeze shut. It’s like a clamp around Steve’s heart. With trembling lips, Bucky finally speaks.

“You aren’t.”

And then he shoves himself to his feet and dashes off into the night.


	2. iv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF ARCHIVE WARNINGS AND ADDITIONAL TAGS.** None of the new tags I added are directly addressed in this chapter, but they will be later in the fic.

**iv.**

Steve finds the vault a few weeks later.

They find it outside of Riga, just close enough to the Russian border for plausible deniability. It isn’t the first one they’ve found—Hydra’s kept safehouses scattered across the globe, little spiders’ nests of weapons and intelligence—but it’s the first one they’ve found like _this_. Steve can’t stop staring at it, at the thin foam padding on the chair, the double-thick restraints, the cruel arc of metal attached to what look like shock plates. He doesn’t understand the specifics, but he knows, without a doubt, what this _thing_ must be.

The air reeks of sweat and musk and fear, and Steve feels it seeping into his skin. He can’t breathe. Can’t think of anything except how they must have used this chair.

Sam trots into the chamber behind Steve, and his shoulders fall. “Oh, no. Steve, no. Don’t do this to yourself.”

But Steve barely hears him. All he can hear is the pounding of his own heart, and—he could swear he hears it—an echo of Bucky’s screams.

Behind the chair is a tube of thick plated glass that’s been partially lifted. A viper’s nest of cables dangle from the tube’s ceiling. It’s not even twenty steps from the chamber to the chair. And there’s something so plain in its design, so straightforward, that it can’t be the only vault like this.

So boring and mundane to Hydra. Just another weapon to be used.

“You can’t change what’s happened,” Sam says, tugging at Steve’s shoulder. “Come on. We’ve got what we need.”

There’s a medic’s station facing the chair, off to one side, its screen blank and dusty. An old VCR is bracketed to its underside. Steve pries the tape out, then checks the drawers on the station, where he finds a handful of old charts.

“Now we do,” he says.

 

*

 

There’s an electronics shop next to their hotel. When they make their way back to town, Steve stops inside, but they laugh him right back out when he asks for a VCR. Steve meets back up with Sam on the square, surrounded by the candy-colored buildings crowned in lacework of stone. This morning, he’d run through the streets, breathing in the Baltic air and relishing the beautiful sights. Now he feels like everything’s crowding in, garish and far too bright.

“I’m sure Coulson’s got a VCR somewhere,” Sam says. “We can worry about it when we get back.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not sure if I want SHIELD to see whatever’s here. At least not yet.” His throat is so tight, it’s like someone’s choking him. He doesn’t want to know, but he has to know if he ever hopes to help Bucky again. _If_ he ever sees Bucky again. After what happened last time, then, god, he’d probably stay away too.

Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets and glances down the twilit street. “I’m gonna go grab some dinner at the café we passed earlier. If you want to join me—”

“Go ahead. I’m not hungry,” Steve says.

“You might feel better if you eat.”

Steve looks at him, at that strained smile and forced casualness on Sam’s face. He’s working overtime to play it cool for them both. He shouldn’t have to. Steve never meant for him to take this burden on. “You don’t have to do this, Sam.”

“I don’t have to do anything, but I’m here, aren’t I?” Sam gestures to the city at large. “I’m just watching out for you, man.”

“And I just want some time to clear my head.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced, but after a few moments, he squares his shoulders. “Promise me you’ll be careful. There’s a lot of stuff we grabbed today.” He chews on his lower lip. “Don’t torture yourself with it, okay?”

 

*

 

Steve’s torturing himself with it.

Digging through these Hydra archives is no different than anything else he’s done since SHIELD collapsed, but now it’s too close, so close to the bone. Sam agreed to help him find Bucky, but he’s too embarrassed to admit that he found him once, fleetingly, right outside his apartment building. Mostly he’s too embarrassed about what happened next. He tells himself it wasn’t really Bucky coming on to him, it was just some kind of weird instinctual thing getting all mixed up with fragments of memory, but that makes him feel worse for responding to it.

Makes him feel doubly worse for thinking about it every night since, staring at the darkened ceiling as he lies naked in bed, trailing his hand down his stomach.

But nothing makes him feel as awful as the files they unearthed today. They’re all handwritten or typewritten ones—no one bothered to digitize them, so they weren’t in Natasha’s file dump—and they paint a gruesome story in nothing but numbers and vitals and duty orders. Steve’s glad his Russian is cursory at best, but what he understands is brutal enough. Words like _Asset resisted direct order; recommended for_ and then a word that Steve doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know and wishes he could unlearn and forget all of this.

Date and time stamps, chronicling missions. Tracking which safehouse the asset was stored in when. Rejected requisitions. Receipts for obscene quantities of CO2 and saline drips. And then a scrap of paper Sam found that had been pinned over an officer’s workstation with a list of Russian surnames and tally marks.

Steve shoves away from the desk, casts one more glance at the VHS tape, and steps out into the hotel courtyard to let the thick buzz of night crowd out all his thoughts. Everything is inky and indistinct, and the greenery hasn’t been trimmed in a while; thick fronds feather against Steve’s face as he strolls along the garden paths. He imagines them as grasping hands. The crickets roar and the fountain babbles and still Steve can’t hear anything but those screams.

“Steve.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut—for a moment, he’s convinced he imagined it—but then he turns toward a thick copse of cherry trees, and he can just make out a figure there. Something in his chest unfolds, like it’s the first time he’s been able to breathe in weeks and weeks. His eyes start to water and he’s relieved, just so damn relieved that he can’t stand it. “Buck.”

Bucky’s gaze darts toward him, just barely visible as it reflects the moon. “Are you alone?”

“I have a private room.” Steve speaks under his breath, but he doesn’t dare take another step. He can’t risk startling him again. “We can—talk there, or—” Shame washes over him, remembering how well _that_ worked out last time. “—We can go somewhere else, too, if you’d rather.”

_Where are you staying are you eating are you safe I’m so sorry I’m so sorry for everything I should have been there for you I shouldn’t have done any of these things_

Bucky presses his lips together and doesn’t answer for a long moment before he finally says, “Your room’s fine.”

Steve nods, smiling, smiling like a fucking idiot and he knows it. Bucky’s actually talking to him now. He seems less reluctant and fearful. Did he track them to Latvia? How long has he been following them?

“This way.” Steve leads Bucky through the courtyard to his first-floor room, with its clean white walls and clean white bed and TV with the news muted and terra cotta tiled bathroom. The curtains on the French doors flutter as Steve closes them. He reaches for the lock, but then looks at Bucky—asking permission. With a hesitant nod from Bucky, he locks them in.

The TV’s playing stock footage of the helicarriers crashing over the Potomac as the headline reads MORE HYDRA AGENTS ARRESTED IN NYC. Steve shuts the screen off.

“I guess you found it,” Bucky says. “The vault.”

He’s looking at the ground, not at the piles of Hydra documents spread like an autopsy across the desk. Steve hurriedly gathers them up into folders, cramming them inside at random, and hides the VHS tape in one, too.

“I remembered it,” Bucky continues. “Thought maybe I could find . . . something. Some kind of sign, or clue.”

“Are you remembering more things?” Steve asks. He looks Bucky over carefully. He’s dressed similarly to how he was the other night, but his shirt is dirty, and his hair clumps together in strands. There’s a faint whiff of sweat and musk around him. Steve doesn’t mind. He loves that smell, he admits to himself. It reminds him of long marches through the Alps, and nights spent skin to skin, both of them filthy with mud and sweat and other things besides, and not caring a goddamned bit, because they were together.

The memory pulls at Steve with a desperation he doesn’t want to feel.

Bucky shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “I’m starting to remember more.”

Steve nods carefully, and perches on the edge of the bed. He can’t push or pry. He has to let Bucky volunteer whatever he’s comfortable with.

“I wish I weren’t,” Bucky says.

Steve folds in on himself, wounded. “Bucky, I’m so sorry—”

“I’m not a good person.” Bucky’s shoulders draw up to his ears with a dull metallic sound.

Steve clutches a fistful of bedding as he tries to think of a safe response. “You weren’t in control. But you are now.”

“No. I wasn’t a good person before.”

Steve goes still. He has to wrack his brain to remember the finer details of before. So much has happened since then. He’s only been awake for three years, but they’ve been three hard years, twisting him every which way as he tries to adjust to his new life. Fighting off aliens and learning about the future—the _present_ —and stopping a resurgent Hydra . . .

“I hurt you,” Bucky says.

His fingers subconsciously graze against his stomach, where they dug the bullets out. “I told you, you weren’t in control—”

“I fucked up everything I touched. Including you.” His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are narrowed with undirected anger. “I don’t remember much, but I remember how it felt, to hurt you. Before they got ahold of me, I mean. I remember hurting you, and thinking, ‘Good.’”

Steve’s sinking through the mattress, his head spinning. “Are you talking about the war?”

“I guess.” He shrugs. “I was fucked up and angry, and I wanted you to feel like I felt.”

“Bucky, please.” Steve stands up and steps toward him. He can’t let him think he’s a bad person. Can’t let him feel guilty about anything, whether he was in control of himself or not. “It was a long time ago. You’re the best person I know. Whatever you did, I forgive you—”

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” he whimpers, and backs up against the wall.

Steve stops dead in his tracks and lets his arms drop. He’d been reaching out to embrace him, to cradle Bucky’s head against his chest, reassure him everything would be all right. Like an idiot. Yes, they’d touched the other night, but Bucky barely remembered anything, and Steve shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have let it happen that way.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He sinks back onto the mattress. “It won’t happen again.” _Any of it_ , Steve tells himself.

Bucky’s arms are raised to protect his face: a boxer’s defensive stance. Steve supposes it’s better than being on the attack. Slowly, he eases back down, but he still doesn’t look at Steve. Every inch of him looks exhausted, so exhausted. The brilliant blue of his eyes has dulled into something like stone.

“I thought there might be answers at the base,” Bucky says. “I’ve got all these—these broken pieces, and I don’t know how they fit together. But you beat me to it.”

Steve takes a deep breath, steeling himself for what he’s going to say. “You could come back to the States with us. They’re rebuilding SHIELD. We could bring you in, get you medical treatment, whatever you need.”

For a minute, Bucky looks like he’s going to run. His whole body’s poised for it, his muscles bunched with potential energy. But he slowly unwinds. “What is it you want?”

“What I want?” Steve frowns. “That’s not important. It’s what you want, Buck.”

“Just tell me,” he says, with a bladed tone. Steve feels it pressing against his throat like that metal arm.

“I want you to be safe. Happy.” _I want you back._ “I want my friend back,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky shakes his head, over and over. “No. No. He’s dead. You don’t understand. I can’t be that guy—”

“I—of course not. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I get it.” Bucky grimaces; his hands unfold from his pockets and he starts unfastening his gloves. “It’s like a reflex. You want it without knowing why.”

Steve nods, looking down at his own hands folded in his lap. When Bucky had kissed him, it felt so easy and natural and right to kiss him back, an old song whose melody he couldn’t forget. Like they’d never stopped kissing, never stopped being in love, never stopped stitching a life together out of whatever tiny scraps of time they could steal for themselves.

“I’ve got a lot of those feelings now,” Bucky says.

Bucky shakes off his jacket. He must be wearing at least three layers of clothes—a faded green thermal shirt over a white t-shirt, and jeans, and heavy boots. Steve can’t help but trace the shapes of muscles beneath his shirts, thick and brutal and deadly.

“We can help you,” Steve says. “Whatever it is you want, or need, we can help you.”

Bucky barks a bitter laugh. “Sure.”

“I’m serious. Those things you did—it wasn’t you, not really. SHIELD understands that. Please, Buck.” Steve peeks up at him through his lashes. “I want to help.”

He grimaces. “I know you do.”

They fall silent again. Steve’s thoughts are whirring and whirring, and they refuse to settle. Bucky seems rational now, he seems like he’s at least on his way toward remembering himself, but that could change in an instant. All it could take is one bad memory or one reflex surfacing, and he could be back to that empty killer they’d turned him into.

He should call Sam in. But he doesn’t want to risk spooking Bucky again.

Bucky’s hovering, now, halfway through taking off his outer layers. He looks like there’s something more he wants to ask, but refuses to do so. “Do you, um . . . want some food? A shower, maybe?” Steve asks.

Slowly, Bucky nods. “Shower.”

Steve lets out his breath. This is a good sign. Definitely a step forward. Steve moves to the bathroom and pulls down a clean towel for Bucky, then starts tinkering with the bath faucet, trying to get the temperature just right—

“Jesus. I can do it.” Bucky lingers behind him, as far away as possible while still inside the narrow bathroom with Steve.

“Sorry.” Steve smiles weakly, and backs out. Bucky gives him a wide berth the whole time, and it scrapes Steve’s heart raw. Then Bucky slams the bathroom door shut on him. With a slow, measured breath, Steve lets the sting of it fade and goes back to the main room.

Steve checks his phone—missed text from Sam. _Heading to bed. Call if you need anything._ He considers it again, but he’s not ready. He doesn’t think Bucky’s ready, either. If he can get Bucky to stay here a little longer, he’s sure he can persuade him to come with them. He calls room service and orders a burger, asking them to leave it outside the room. Bucky doesn’t want to see anyone, and he doesn’t particularly want anyone to see Bucky.

Then Steve sinks down onto the bed, drained. He’s spent all day seeing evidence of what horrific things Hydra did to Bucky, and all Bucky acted like he cared about was some stupid sleight seventy years ago that Steve can’t even remember. But, hell, he’s just glad Bucky is remembering at all.

He was right—that he’s not the same Bucky who went off to war. But then, Steve isn’t the same Steve, either. Maybe, just maybe, they can learn each other again.

But that’s too cruel a line of thought, and Steve knows it. No sense in torturing himself even more.

The water shuts off, and Steve’s body tenses. He has to persuade him to stay somehow. Keep him talking, anything. The more time Bucky is here with him, the more he’ll be willing to accept their help. So Steve hopes.

Bucky strides out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and with one look, Steve’s mouth goes dry.

He’s Bucky, but stronger, leaner even, than in the war. His pectorals are carved as if from marble, and the ridges of his abdomen—Steve imagines how it would feel to trail his tongue down them—

But then he sees the scar tissue. The gnarled seam where the metal arm meets flesh. Steve feels sick all over again, The dread that had festered in his gut while he read the reports has boiled over at last.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Bucky says. With a shrug, rivulets of water run down the metal surface. His hair is still soaked, and it drips into the channels of Bucky’s chest and stomach, caressing the firm muscles there. “Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

Bucky stares at him. His chest is rising and falling, heavy. His grip loosens on the towel, and the trail of hair running down below his navel stokes a fire inside Steve. He’s missed Bucky, he’s missed _this_ , and even with his brain screaming at him, reminding him of all the awful truths lurking in the files at the other side of the room, he just wants to believe that they’re no one but who they ever were: two boys in love, two boys who only hid themselves as much as they absolutely had to, but otherwise, they lost themselves in each other for good.

In another life, Steve would wrap his arms around Bucky’s waist and pull him close and whisper something filthy about officers and enlisted men before taking Bucky into his mouth.

In another life, Bucky would climb into bed beside him and hold him and they would fall asleep without fear, without any cares.

In another life, he’d do anything to keep Bucky from ever feeling pain.

This is not that life.

Three things happen in quick succession, so much Steve can’t be sure of the order. Bucky drops the towel. Bucky squeezes his metal hand around Steve’s throat. And Bucky presses Steve face down into the bed.

Steve thinks _not again_ at the same time he thinks _please yes._

Bucky crouches over him, the only point of contact between them that cold metal. The damp tips of his hair feather against Steve’s shoulder as he leans toward Steve’s ear. “I look at you, and I remember wanting you so bad I can’t see straight,” he says in a low, gravelly voice. “I remember feeling like I’d do anything to have you, even just for a little bit.”

Steve swallows, laboring against the metal grip. “I don’t . . . I don’t know if it was ever quite like that.”

“Maybe you just didn’t know it.” His breath is hot against Steve’s cheek. “Maybe I never told you how much I wanted you. Maybe you didn’t care.”

“I always cared,” Steve says, voice muffled. His cock stirs against the mattress. _Traitor._ He doesn’t want to like this, and it’s the last thing Bucky needs. Jesus, Bucky didn’t even want to touch him earlier. Or rather, he didn’t want Steve to touch _him_.

“You keep asking me what I want, and you’re all I can remember wanting. Everything else is—” Bucky makes a frustrated grunt. “It’s just not there.”

“That’s not true, Buck.” Steve closes his eyes as his own memories flit around him. “You wanted to start your own business, back in Brooklyn. You were taking night classes and everything. And then you were helping me with my art, and we were both working so hard to have a good life for ourselves.”

“For a life _together_.” Bucky’s free hand trails down the crease of Steve’s spine, slow and faint enough that Steve has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from moaning. He wants so badly to arch his back into that touch. “It was always about you, wasn’t it?”

“Not for me. For me—” Steve winces as Bucky shoves his face deeper into the sheets. “It was always about you.”

Bucky snarls again and straightens up. “It shouldn’t have been.”

Steve takes a deep breath, as much as he can with the metal hand squeezing around his throat. “I know you’re not the same Bucky. But I want to know you. I want to help you.”

In response, Bucky’s right hand slides down the back of Steve’s jeans.

Steve tenses. Bucky’s fingers tease at his crack, and Steve bucks his hips into the mattress, his shaft rubbing painfully against the front of his jeans. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispers. “Just because you remember us having sex, or—whatever it is you remember—”

Bucky laughs, but it sounds dry and brittle as autumn leaves. “I remember you being way too embarrassed to talk about it. You never wanted to put a name to what we were, did you? Even though I remember begging you . . .”

“Listen, I’m sorry, Buck—”

He shudders as Bucky slides a finger inside him. He isn’t being gentle about it, and fuck if that doesn’t turn Steve on even more. After a moment, Bucky slips another finger inside, stretching him wider. He leans over Steve again and gusts hot air against his neck. “Do you want me to stop?” he growls.

Oh, god, Steve’s body flushes at that voice, at the feel of Bucky pressing inside him with his fingers, at the warm skin and cold metal. He remembers a cramped tent a lifetime ago; he remembers Bucky asking him the same thing after so long apart. _Please. Tell me to stop._

He couldn’t then. And he can’t now.

“No,” Steve says hoarsely.

Bucky’s hand eases out of his jeans and he lets go of Steve’s throat. Steve shudders at the sudden loss, and presses his face against the mattress as his hands curl into fists. He tries to catch his breath.

“Get up,” Bucky says.

Steve braces himself and stands on wobbly legs. He turns toward Bucky and raises one hand, reaching to touch his face. “Bucky—”

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” Bucky snarls again. His eyes are so dark now, his pupils wide and his lip curled back, and he raises one hand, ready to fight Steve back.

Steve swallows. He doesn’t understand—can’t understand—so all he can do is obey. “I’m sorry—”

“Take off your clothes.”

Bucky’s expression is unmoving; he’s staring at Steve with the same empty intent as when they faced each other on the helicarrier. It sends a chill through Steve’s blood even as his erection throbs against his jeans. Steve tugs his shirt off overhead and tosses it to the side.

“Slower,” Bucky says.

Steve nods. He can’t form words right now. All he can think about is Bucky’s naked body in front of him and a lifetime he should have spent loving him. Slowly, he unfastens his jeans and slides them off, along with his shoes and socks and boxer briefs. He glimpses at Bucky’s bare skin as he stands back up, and sees the faintest network of scars. Thighs, stomach, chest, right arm—he’s covered in them.

Jesus, and Bucky’s rock hard. His instinct, seventy years buried, is to sink to his knees and kiss those sturdy thighs and lap at his cock, smile as Bucky moans as quietly as he can, but never quiet enough—

Bucky glances at Steve’s own erection and makes a disgruntled noise. “Sorry,” Steve says with a faint blush.

“I swear, if you apologize one more time—”

The threat sends a frisson down Steve’s spine. “You’ll what?” It slips out so easily, like they’re still horny teenagers, rutting on a squeaky Murphy bed in their dingy one-room flat, or soldiers snatching at every spare moment they can in the forest. Steve lowers his head, ashamed, but then Bucky smiles like he’s going in for the kill.

He snatches Steve by the throat again, but this time, he shoves him face-first against the wall. Steve grunts, but doesn’t resist. He sighs softly as Bucky’s cock pokes against his ass. Bucky reaches for the bottle of complimentary lotion on the desk, and Steve bites his lower lip, straining to hear the sound of Bucky squirting the lotion out, imagining how it looks smeared around that perfect dick—

And then, with an angry snarl, Bucky shoves inside of him. Steve’s chin scrapes against the plaster wall, and he clenches, reflexive. Bucky bites at Steve’s shoulder in response, then eases partly out of him before thrusting all the way again. Steve whimpers at the pain—he wasn’t nearly ready, not after so long—but also the sharp stinging pleasure as Bucky presses into him just right.

Bucky’s hips move with mechanical precision, steady and forceful, his left hand remaining at Steve’s throat as he slides his right hand up Steve’s chest and twists his fingers around a nipple. Stars swirl behind Steve’s eyes as pleasure overwhelms him.

That’s when the Russian begins.

Bucky’s grunting against his ear, muttering a string of what Steve can only guess is profanity. The consonants are heavy and serrated, and he could be reading the phone book for all Steve cares—the raw scrape of the words pushes Steve over the brink. He comes against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, crying out and not giving a shit who hears.

Bucky’s teeth at his shoulder brings Steve back to himself. “ _Biksa_ ,” he hisses. His body covers Steve, pinning him in place, and with a feral, guttural noise, Bucky thrusts into him one last time. Heat floods through Steve as Bucky pulses inside of him.

And then Bucky lets go. Staggers back. Heat trickles down the insides of Steve’s thighs as he gasps for air. He backs away from the wall and props his hands on his legs to catch his breath and try to find some semblance of speech again.

When he turns around, Bucky is curled up on the edge of the bed, knees tucked under his chin. His lips are moving as he stares through Steve. He looks emptied out. Dark crescents lurk under his eyes and his lips are red and raw.

“Jesus, Buck. Are you okay?”

Steve moves toward him to wrap him in his arms. It’s what he _wants_ , is to hold him again. Kiss him. Comfort him. He needs to let him know he’s safe. He wants him to _feel_ safe. There was a time Steve couldn’t imagine any place safer than curled in Bucky’s arms, after all.

But the warning look on Bucky’s face says it all.

Bucky scrambles backward on the bed. “Wait, I’m sorry. I won’t touch you—I just thought, y’know, _considering_ —”

“You want me to cuddle up to you? Call you Stevie? Is that how you remember, making love like sweethearts?” Bucky snatches the first piece of clothing on the floor that he can find—Steve’s jeans—and shoves his legs into them. “You told me we could face the world. But I couldn’t. I can’t.”

“It’s not about what I want,” Steve says. But he realizes he did exactly that. _He_ wanted to embrace him again, feel the soft flutter of Bucky’s lips. But Bucky, it seems, just wants some kind of release. Something to fuck. Frustration burns behind Steve’s eyes. Why can’t he do any of this right?

Bucky snatches a clean t-shirt off the stack in Steve’s open suitcase and pulls it on overhead with an angry clank of metal plates. “You’re just like the rest.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Steve tries to move around Bucky, blocking him from the door. “Come on, talk to me. What the hell is going on?”

Bucky curls his hands into fists and glowers at Steve. “Get out of my way.”

“Stay with me. I can help you.” Steve’s voice sounds weak and frail. “Please,” he whispers.

Bucky seizes Steve by the chin, and Steve melts into the touch, he’s soft and pliant, he knows damn well he’ll let Bucky do whatever he wants to him—

And then Bucky flings him forward, away from the door.

Steve sprawls on the floor with a groan. And by the time he pushes himself to his hands and knees, Bucky’s gone again, the curtains fluttering in the breeze.


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PLEASE CHECK ARCHIVE WARNINGS AND TAGS BEFORE READING THIS CHAPTER. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions or concerns before you read.**
> 
>  
> 
> [Steve's "Stars _and_ Stripes" shirt is a real thing and is for sale by the awesome Shop5!](https://society6.com/product/pride-gmb_t-shirt#s6-2603918p15a4v86a5v17a11v50)
> 
>  
> 
>  Also [this fabulous bisexual flag Cap shield shirt](https://society6.com/product/shield-kum_t-shirt#s6-2405647p15a4v136a5v17a11v50).
> 
> <3 [Bohemienne](http://starandshield.tumblr.com)

**iii.**

Steve turns over the records to Director Coulson and what’s left of SHIELD, but only after making copies for himself. The tape, he hangs on to. Doesn’t mention it to anyone. He’s not ready to watch it yet, and if he’s not ready, then neither is anyone else. Bucky deserves at least that.

“Let’s give it a rest for a few weeks,” Sam suggests, when they return to Avengers Tower in Manhattan. Steve’s not yet ready to give up his apartment in DC, but every night it rings louder and louder with loneliness. He likes hearing the others moving around the Avengers building at night, whispering in the lounge, shuffling up and down the halls, firing off rounds at the range, tinkering away in the labs, blowing off steam together in private suites that are probably considered soundproof to anyone without supersoldier hearing. Steve lies awake at night and listens to the building’s infrastructure click and shift and sigh.

It clicks like metal plates, like a gun being cocked. It sighs like muffled pleasure in a forest dark and still.

Steve jams a pillow over his head and when he finally dreams, it’s of a life just across the river from Manhattan—a life that died decades ago.

 

*

 

“Just put me on your shoulders,” Natasha shouts over the cheers. “I’m not going to choke you out, I promise.”

Steve rolls his eyes at Natasha. “I’ve seen those thighs of death at work.”

“But I can’t see anything!” She bounces on her toes, trying to peer over the crowd as the NYC Pride Parade streams by.

They've barely been here two minutes, and already Natasha is complaining. It had been her idea to come in the first place, but even in “disguise”—which for Steve, basically counts as aviators and civilian clothing—Steve feels overexposed. He tolerated Natasha painting a blue, purple, and pink bisexual flag on his cheek to match his “It’s Stars _and_ Stripes” shirt, and he helped her persuade Sam to don a pansexual flag of his own, even though Natasha kept up a steady stream of not-so-subtly trying to set them both up on a date the whole time she painted their faces.

(“Sorry, Tash, but Cap blew his chances with me when he let seventy years of ex-boyfriend drama rip out my steering wheel,” Sam said, and Steve realized Sam was just serious enough that there was at least some truth behind it, which turned his whole face bright red.)

Finally, Steve hoists her up on his shoulders, and she cheers and screams along with the rest of the crowd. Steve can’t help but grin, and Sam’s grinning, and the energy is so unbelievable and crackling and raw, and Steve can’t believe that he’s alive for this—for a freedom he and Bucky had so long been denied, for such an incredible chance to be himself, fully, honestly, that his eyes water and then he feels sick thinking of all the years he’d spent hiding and suddenly he wants to be anywhere but here and he thinks he’s going to throw up.

 _We can’t keep doing this,_ Bucky murmured, seventeen and lying on top of Steve on his living room floor, his hands in Steve’s hair and his boyish lips flushed and raw from kissing for what felt like hours and hours. _Eventually, someone’s gonna see._

There were nights when the fog wrapped around them on the streets and they’d join hands and pull close and pretend that they could always be like this. There were days full of endless hours, just the two of them, as they learned every last inch of each other’s bodies and every subtle sigh and contented moan. There was the first night they spent together in their own room, completely theirs, so overwhelmed and overjoyed that Steve couldn’t even sleep, only watch the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest beneath his hand and the way his eyelashes glinted in the light that trickled through the cheap shades.

Then there was the snap of Mr. Barnes’s belt that sent them running in the first place. Scraping together nickels and dimes when they couldn’t make rent. Steve pawning his mother’s bracelet for five dollars, but telling Bucky he’d gotten the money as a bonus. He never did get a chance to tell him the truth.

Even alone, even consumed in one another, they smothered their feelings down and denied themselves each other’s touch anywhere they could be seen and never, ever let their voices rise above the whisper because all it would take was one complaint from the neighbors for them to lose everything.

And then Bucky sat him down and didn’t hold his hand as he clutched his enlistment papers and told Steve, _It’s better this way. Go have a good life. Go find yourself a sweet dame._

“Steve?” Natasha props her arms on top of his head. “You okay?”

_There’s no fairytale ending for us, Steve._

“Just feeling a little . . . overwhelmed, is all.” Steve manages a weak smile. “Happy for everyone here. For how far we’ve all come.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, but doesn’t press any further. Sam exchanges a look with Steve, but hidden safely behind his sunglasses, Steve just offers him a shrug.

After a few minutes more, Natasha catches sight of some friends—when or how she met them, Steve can only guess—and hops down from his shoulders to go greet them, dragging Sam with her. “See you back at the tower?” Sam mouths to Steve.

“Sure. Sounds good.”

As soon as they’ve been swallowed up by the crowd, Steve turns and cuts back toward Sixth Avenue.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to be here. Not at all. It’s just the way it gnaws at him, this strange feeling of living long enough to see equality on the horizon, but for it to have come far too late for him. At least, too late for when it really mattered to him. He’s been on a few dates, with men and women both; kissed a few frogs, kissed a few more perfectly nice souls, but all they could see when they looked at him was Captain America, and all he could see when he looked at them was everything he’d lost.

Peggy. Bucky. He should be amazed they’re here at all, alive, at least sometimes aware of who they are. But when he aimed the Valkyrie for the water, he’d wished that someday he could come home. He should have known that home isn’t the kind of place you can go back to. It’s something you have to find, again and again.

Bucky’s found and left him twice now. Even Steve’s not foolish enough to think it will happen a third time.

“Steve Rogers! Hey, Captain Rogers!”

Steve looks up and freezes, right there on the corner of 44th Street, as News 9’s Sarah Chang and her cameraman swing toward him, and his heart sinks. He could feign ignorance, or run—it’s not like they could catch him. But he’d been too lost in thought, and it might be a little rude. Chang’s been nothing but generous in her coverage of Avengers fluff pieces before.

“Hey, Sarah. Covering the parade?”

“That was the plan.” Sarah smiles at him, and he catches the quick flicker he’s gotten used to seeing, the hasty sweep of eyes over his muscles. It doesn’t annoy him, exactly, but after his first twenty-some years of life without it, it still unsettles him. “Looks like you’ve already enjoyed yourself at Pride.”

“It’s important to show support,” Steve says.

“Mind if I get that on record?”

Steve presses his lips together. It’s not like he’s in the closet. But broadcasting it to the world is a different matter. He can already imagine the earful he might get from Coulson, or Hill, or Stark. _No one wants or needs to know what Captain America does behind closed doors_ , they’d say, as if he ceases to be bisexual when he isn’t currently engaged in the act.

That decides it for him. “You bet.”

Sarah beams, then takes a moment to confer with her cameraman; once they’re settled, she positions herself on the curb next to Steve and clutches the News 9 microphone between them. The cameraman gives them a silent countdown with his fingers, then points at Sarah.

“Among the many New Yorkers out to show their support for the Pride Parade is none other than Captain America himself, Steve Rogers. Now, Cap, I imagine there are plenty of Americans who might question your attendance here today. They might say you’re butting your nose into politics where it isn’t welcome.”

“Well, ma’am, I’m going to have to respectfully say that they’re wrong,” Steve says. “America stands for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence. I can’t think of any greater embodiment of that than being free to love who you love and to be your honest self.”

Sarah’s smile widens, predatory. “And just what does Pride mean to you personally, Steve?”

He breathes slowly. It’s one thing to walk around as a civilian with a flag painted on his cheek. It’s something else entirely to say it out loud. As Captain America. Which is why it’s so important for him to say it now.

“The truth is, I’m bisexual. Always have been.”

Sarah makes a faint noise, but nods at him to continue.

“For a good part of my life, it was illegal for me to acknowledge it. I could have gone to prison, or worse. I never denied what I was, but there were . . . dangers.” He winces; he hears the snap of Mr. Barnes’s belt against Bucky’s back. “So waking up now and finding out how far we’ve come toward achieving equality, though we aren’t all the way there yet—I couldn’t be prouder.”

“That’s very touching, Cap.”

He shrugs. “If knowing Captain America is bi can give people courage to be themselves, well, then I can think of no greater honor.”

“This sounds very personal to you, Cap. Is there a special someone in your life?”

Steve’s chest constricts. “There’s—there’s someone who’s meant the world to me. Always has.” His voice is cracking, and he knows it. “Whether they want to be in my life or not, though . . . That’s their choice, not mine.”

His pulse is hammering in his ears. He needs to get away. Get the camera off of him. That was stupid, so stupid of him to say. Bucky would be furious. At least—the old Bucky would. The man Bucky is now—god, Steve doesn’t even know. It seems to change daily. He remembers Steve, but it’s all wrong, it’s all jumbled up, and sometimes Steve wishes he’d just let Steve bring him in to SHIELD to get him help, and other times he wishes he’d run far, far away from Steve and never look back.

It’s the last thing he wants, but maybe it’s exactly what Bucky needs.

“You heard it here first, folks, a News 9 exclusive—Captain America is bisexual. Thanks so much for your time, Cap.”

Steve mumbles his way through partings and leaves in a daze. He just needs to be alone. He needs to get away from everyone.

Tony Stark has other plans.

“What the fuck, Cap? Did you just out yourself on a local news fluff piece?” Tony shouts, the minute Steve steps off the elevator in the Avengers penthouse. “And insult almost half the American voting public in the process?”

“Wrong is wrong, Tony. I have to call it like I see it.”

“I could have set up a news conference for you. CNN. Something big-budget. We could have prepped you, prepared a statement, maybe dress you in something nicer than jeans—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tony. It’s a sexuality, not a declaration of war. It’s not a big deal.” Steve shoves past him, heading for the living quarters, but then he sees all the other eyes watching him from the couches arranged around the mega-screen TV. Maria, Bruce, Thor. Steve shakes his head and keeps walking past them.

“It _is_ a big deal. We’re already getting calls from GQ, Rolling Stone, the Washington Blade—they’re very upset you didn’t attend DC Pride, by the way—everyone wants an exclusive interview, people are asking about the war, someone wants to know if Peggy Carter was your beard—”

Steve groans and slumps against his door. “Leave Peggy out of this. Don’t let anyone go near her house, I swear—”

“—they want to ring up the Howling Commandos, or what’s left of them, anyway—”

“Enough!” Steve bashes his fist against the door. Triple reinforced, but he still leaves a dent. “I’ve said all I needed to say. Anything else is no one’s business but my own.”

Tony holds his hands up defensively. “Well, I’m just saying, the amount of people tweeting about how much they want to have a threesome with Captain America—”

“That’s not really what it means to be bisexual—”

“And then someone posted a photo of you and Winter Boy—”

Steve whirls around, his heart in his throat. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“Okay, fine, so it’s before he went all Manchurian Candidate. Something from the Smithsonian exhibit of you two and Carter laughing together. Hashtag-World War Threesome.”

“Jesus, Tony. That’s not what this is about.”

“Are you sure? Because, I mean . . .” Tony screws up his face. “You three did look awfully cozy, I’m just saying—”

“No interviews. No bothering Peggy or the Commandos. And no threesomes.” Steve presses his thumb to the door to unlock his suite. “It’s over and done with. Whatever your PR people need to say, as long as they don’t negate what I said. But it starts and stops there.”

Tony’s expression softens, and he nods. “All right. I’ll do what I can.”

Steve starts to close the door, then stops. “And did you get me that VCR I asked for?”

“Hooked it up to your entertainment system weeks ago. You can watch all the vintage bisexual porn you want.”

“ _Enough_ , Tony.”

Tony smiles and stuffs his hands in his pockets; he looks down for a minute. “I’m proud of you, Cap.”

Steve feels a fist squeezing around his heart, and the mere thought of anyone hounding Peggy and her in-home nurse makes him want to throw up, but he manages to return a polite nod. “Thanks.”

And then he locks himself inside his suite.

 

*

 

Steve pours himself a tall glass of Asgardian elixir and starts from the beginning.

The first segment is dated November 12, 1996, according to the date-time stamp in the bottom left-hand corner. The camera focuses directly on the chair they found in the Latvian vault, but the angle’s wide enough to show the whole chamber. In the background, a handful of men stand around the glass tube, muttering to each other in Russian and adjusting controls on a panel. Stark’s auto-translation software runs an English transcript across the bottom of the screen, but it’s nothing significant—“No, no, wrong dial, yes, that’s it.”

Then the glass lifts, and they’re unhooking a figure from inside the chamber and dragging him out. Steve’s stomach churns at the sight of Bucky like this—limp, damp from the melted frost, his eyes rolling and wild like a spooked horse. They strap him into the chair, and the moment the metal plates clamp onto his temples, the screaming begins.

Steve turns the volume down low with a taste like gasoline in his mouth.

A man in a Russian Federation army uniform reads out a series of nonsense phrases—“furnace,” “freight car”—but with each word, Bucky’s screaming recedes and by the end of it, he only looks at the man. Expectant. Obedient.

Steve takes another long drink. Bucky was a loyal soldier. He followed orders, even if he didn’t personally agree with them, because he saw the importance of working as a unified team. But this . . . this is something else entirely.

It’s not Bucky, Steve tells himself. It’s only the bits of him they didn’t scoop out and try to throw away.

Somehow it doesn’t reassure him.

 _Mission for you, soldier,_ the translation reads as the army officer speaks. _An assassination in Yugoslavia. No witnesses._

Bucky nods. Stands. And a team swoops in to strip his cryosleep jumpsuit off of him and begin dressing him in his combat gear.

The next segment is dated November 15, 1996, and must be his return from the mission. At the officer’s urging, he gives a full report of the mission, his tone flat, his stare dead. He pays no attention to the men stripping him naked; he doesn’t flinch when they blast him with a hose to wash him off. _Good work, soldier,_ the officer says, then it’s back into the jumpsuit and back into the chamber. Tubes attached. Glass sealed. Then a hiss and a rush of white fog fills the tank.

Steve’s hand is shaking as he reaches for his glass. He could stop now—he gets the idea. They wake him up, make sure his conditioning is sound, give him his orders, and off he goes, sometimes with orders to return to the Latvia vault, sometimes with other vaults named. At such a remove, with such a compliant subject, he can see how easily they’d come to view him as just a tool and not a person. How calmly they could carry on as if every second he was under their command wasn’t a sickening crime.

And yet Steve feels the pain of it like nails raking into his face. He’s having to remind himself that this is Bucky he’s seeing, _Bucky_ , not some faceless weapon, and every time he does, he has to fight the urge to punch something. Anything. It’s disgusting, it’s appalling in how mundane it is. The fact that Bucky broke out of it at all is nothing short of miraculous.

He could stop now. But he doesn’t. He has to see this through.

And then, a few missions later, it’s March 8, 1999.

The men opening the cryochamber aren’t the usual medical technicians. They’re loud, they’re abrasive, they’re arguing with each other, words slurring together so much the translation software can’t fully keep up. _This is stupid,_ one says, even as they’re dragging Bucky to the chair. _There’s plenty of girls we could buy in the capital._

_You heard the colonel. No leaving the base._

_Pass me the bottle—_

_It’s not like the others don’t do it all the time—_

Steve’s ribs are knitting shut and terror is a spider crawling up his spine.

The soldiers stumble through the codewords; it takes far too long for Bucky’s screaming to fade. They’re laughing and ribbing one another, arguing about who’s going first, until finally one shoves forward and barks _Get on your knees, soldier, open your mouth_ —

Steve can’t watch.

He can’t stop watching.

_What are you, some kind of fag—_

_It’s better than nothing—_

_My buddy was at the Siberia station, said they did it all the time—Said he likes it, never complains—_

Steve stares at the translation scrolling along the bottom of the screen. He can’t look at what’s happening. The sound is awful enough. The others laughing, cheering as the first man takes his turn, standing in front of Bucky, who’s on his knees with his dead stare. The drunkard seizes Bucky’s— _the soldier’s_ , Steve corrects himself—hair and forces him to work faster. _You like it, don’t you, stupid whore—if we’re gonna be stuck here with you, might as well have some use—_

Steve’s mouth is sour and his body is tense as a spring and he’s going to be sick, so sick, even though he can’t make himself watch this.

The first man finishes with a shout and Bucky bears it all. Silent. Accepting. No response. The next drunkard bends him over the medical examination table and then Bu— _the soldier_ is crying in pain and the others are laughing and calling him a slut and a dog and Steve is so grateful for the grainy VHS tape and then hates himself for being grateful because it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to Bucky, it didn’t make it hurt any less, it didn’t make it the slightest bit okay, and this time when the drunkard comes with a shout Steve doubles over and empties his stomach right on the hand-hewn reclaimed wood flooring of his suite.

 _Get up, you slut,_ and there’s that word, _biksa_ , that Bucky said the other night, and _you’re just a fucking whore, you belong to us, you fucking fag, that’s it, take it, you pretty little bitch, put those girly lips to work,_ and it doesn’t end, Steve can’t shut it off, he can’t stop the words from ringing in his head, and the worst part is he knows the sounds that Bucky makes and even as Steve’s puking his guts out he’s getting hard and it makes him wish he were dead.

He wishes he could have taken Bucky’s place, if it would have spared him from this.

He wishes he could undo every kiss and every touch and every word he’s said to Bucky since he found out he was still alive.

He wishes he could identify every single one of those soldiers and slit their throats.

The words are out of his mouth before he even realizes it—“JARVIS, run facial recognition software”—and of course, of fucking course the first name JARVIS reads is _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes_. The man curled in a fetal position on the floor, pants at his ankles, stringy hair clinging to his face and his eyes hollowed out and staring straight ahead as he awaits his next command.

Finally, after all five men have taken their turn, the tape clicks over to another mission. Bucky’s dragged from the chamber. They read the code words. He receives his mission brief. He returns and gives a report. And then he’s back in the tube.

And then the tape ends.

The printout next to the entertainment console lists three of the five men. One died in Chechnya in 2004. One has been a missing person since just after the Insight helicarrier battle in April—either killed in one of the anti-Hydra operations, or else disappeared himself without a trace. The other, retired now from the Russian army, lives in Volgograd with his second wife and three kids.

Volgograd. Only a few hours, on the quinjet. If he runs it in stealth, the border patrol will never know he was there. A knife to the throat was Bucky’s way, back in the war, but Steve thinks he could warm to the idea. He thinks he’d be only too happy to practice on this roach, this inhuman _thing_ —

Steve tears the papers to shreds. Revenge won’t undo what happened to Bucky. Nothing will undo it. And from the sounds of it, this was hardly the only time.

Steve asks JARVIS to clean up the vomit on the floor and then excuses himself to the restroom while the cleaning robot arrives. He stares at himself in the mirror; his mussed blonde hair and his sparkling eyes, now bloodshot, and the blue, purple, and pink smear on his cheek where there used to be a flag. And then he throws up again.

“You have eight thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine new messages, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS informs him as he crawls into bed. “Shall I respond to the interview requests on your behalf?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t listen to a single one.

 

*

 

Bucky’s secret was never his to know. It’s chewing up Steve’s insides like he’s swallowed broken glass. He can’t look Sam or Natasha or anyone in the eye and he can’t bring himself to take the tape to Coulson and he can’t tell anyone because it doesn’t belong to him, but it’s shredding him apart all the same. And whatever it’s doing to him, he can only imagine it’s doing the same to Bucky a million times over, and it diminishes everything Steve’s feeling, it makes him feel like an asshole, it makes him wish he’d never acknowledged Bucky that night outside his apartment building and never dared to imagine they could possibly have what they had before and never said those awful, optimistic things he’d said to Sarah Chang about it being Bucky’s choice.

Bucky has no choice. He’s had no choice for so long. Steve’s been worrying about fairy tales, about degrees of happy endings. Bucky’s been living even worse a nightmare than he realized for decades and decades while Steve slept like a princess, untouched beneath the ice. Steve hates himself for it, he hates every sexual thought he’s ever had about Bucky since he woke up. He hates that he dared to dream they could be together ever again and he hates that he can’t stop thinking about Bucky pressing him against a wall and calling him a slut in Russian—just like the soldiers called Bucky—and he hates waking up with his dick hard and his mouth sour from vomit and his life so fucking charmed, so fucking perfect that this is the worst thing he has to bear.

All anyone wants to talk about is Steve’s stupid pronouncement on News 9. All anyone wants to ask is who that special person is in Steve’s life. Bucky’s a lead contender, as is Peggy, but so are plenty of other people besides—Sam Wilson and Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff and even Clint and Bruce and Maria and Thor, and Steve can’t take it, he can’t take any of it, when he blinks he sees Bucky bent over the examining table as soldiers slap his rump and call him filthy things, he sees Bucky’s cold dead stare as he makes his mouth just another instrument to be used, he sees the horrified look on Bucky’s face and the whites rimming his eyes when he screamed at Steve not to touch him, please never touch him, even though he couldn’t bring himself to say why.

He shouldn’t have had to say why. Steve should have understood. Of course Bucky would remember that kind of abuse more than anything else. If forcing Steve to submit to him made him feel better for even a single second, Steve’s glad for it. But he suspects that in the long run, it did no good.

It’s no comfort when Steve lies face-down on his bed and lets his erection grind into the mattress, pretending Bucky’s on top of him still. He stops before he comes and stands in the shower for twenty minutes, letting cold water rush over him until he can pretend he’s back in the Arctic, leaving it all behind.

 

*

 

“We got a lead in Brooklyn,” Natasha says.

Steve stares at her and tries not to feel like he’s being torn in two. He was about to head out incognito to take his mind off things. File away the edges of everything he’s feeling, every way he can. It’s better that way. Whatever lead Natasha has is sure to dry up by the time he pursues it, just like all the rest.

“Tomorrow,” Steve says, and heads for the elevator bank.

He’s in civilian clothes, he’s in a Yankees cap and aviators, but he knows it won’t make a difference. Ten minutes later he’s in line for a club in Red Hook. He’s been here before, arm in arm with a firefighter with deep brown skin and thick dark hair and a smile like a scimitar who pretended he’d never heard of Captain America and Steve could almost believe him for the night. Tonight, Steve is alone, but doesn’t intend to stay that way for long. He’ll sink to his knees. He’ll bend over in an alley or a cheap hotel or a penthouse suite. He’ll do anything he can to forget.

“Hey, handsome,” someone says behind him, crowding too close against the bar. “Buy you a drink?”

“It might take more than one,” Steve says. The guy rolls his eyes and moves away.

The next guy that asks, Steve just says yes.

“You should take those shades off,” he tells Steve. “Let me see your eyes.”

“I like this view just fine.”

The guy laughs, like it’s some great pickup line, and puts his hand on Steve’s thigh. “My friend’s in the floor show. They put together something new tonight. Can’t wait to see it.”

“Didn’t realize there was a show.”

“Starts in just a few.”

Steve’s new date leads him to one of the velvet booths that face the central stage and orders them another round of drinks. Introduces Steve to his friends. The club’s laid out kind of like the old supper clubs in Harlem he and Bucky used to visit, but that’s about all that’s the same. Steve sips on his drink—something loaded with sugar and neon-colored—and lets the throbbing techno bleed inside his skull.

Then the floor show begins with a flicker of lights and a thunderous noise.

The first dancer takes the stage. He’s wearing red knee-high vinyl boots and blue star-spangled hot pants, and that’s about as far as Steve gets before he realizes what’s going on. He sets his drink down and sits on his hands to keep himself from breaking something as a dubstep version of the old Captain America theme song begins, and the stripper slowly peels away his striped halter top, his suspenders, his hot pants.

Steve can’t move. If he moves, he’s going to punch something.

“In case anyone hasn’t heard, Captain America is officially out of the closet,” the announcer says. “We salute you, Captain Rogers, and that star-spangled ass!”

A stringy-haired stripper in a similarly skimpy black outfit struts onto the stage and flexes his left arm, painted silver with a red star.

“Did you see those old photos of the Winter Fighter guy from the war?” Steve’s date whispers. “Talk about a GILF.”

“GILF?” his friend whispers back.

“You know. Grandpa—”

A drag queen in women’s SSR garb is heading down the stage to join the dance. Steve stands up. Tosses a fifty dollar bill on the table—more than enough to cover his drinks, even with the obscene Brooklyn markup. Then he storms out into the alley, his heart in his throat.

He paces a few minutes, trying to burn off the sugary drink and his fury and everything that’s been gnawing at him for the past week until there’s nothing left.

 _Tell me more about this lead,_ he texts to Natasha.

It takes her a few minutes to respond, but she sends over the full SHIELD file. _Prospect Heights. Sweet old lady’s got a guy renting her basement who just might be your boy._ Steve thumbs through the data as the distant sounds of a techno-remix Andrews Sisters song throbs through the alley.

_I need an address._

A few minutes later, he’s got one, and he’s running as fast as he dares in Converse until he finds the old brownstone, lovely but poorly maintained, and the gated basement apartment entrance that’s practically falling apart. The basement lights are dark, but he knocks anyway, breath burning in his lungs. Nothing. Listens. Still no sound. _Please Bucky please Bucky please_ even though he has no idea what to say. Everything sounds so flippant, so insincere, so ignorant after what he’s seen.

He sits on the basement steps and props his head against the wall and turns all his possible answers over in his head for what must be hours until he’s exhausted himself.

“Shit,” someone mutters from the top of the stairs.

Steve jolts from his half-asleep reverie and charges up to the street level. “Bucky, wait—”

“Just leave me alone.” Bucky’s dressed in way too many layers for late September. He’s got a Yankees cap pulled low and he’s wearing a hoodie over it, gloves, thick jeans and boots. “Please. Leave me alone.”

Steve clenches fists at his sides and closes his eyes. “I saw the tape.”

There’s a long silence pulling taut between him, and Steve’s afraid it’s going to fray.

“What’re you going to do?” Bucky finally asks. He won’t look at Steve; his gaze is down the street, like he’s expecting someone to come for him any minute. “You gonna put that on News 9 too?”

Steve winces like he’s been punched. “Of course not.”

“Might as well. Why stop now?”

“Bucky, please—I didn’t know.” Even now, Steve’s overwhelmed with the urge to reach for him. He wants to press Bucky to his chest and stroke his hair and kiss his forehead and tell him everything will be okay. Like Mr. Barnes’s belt is the worst thing that ever happened to him. Like a single whisper can melt away all the troubles of the world. And Steve feels stupid, so utterly stupid, for not realizing the depths of awfulness in the world.

“You wouldn’t,” is all Bucky says.

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

Bucky shoves past Steve and unlocks his basement door. Sinks against the frame, then glances over his shoulder at Steve. “What the hell. Come inside.”

Steve forces himself to smile and follows Bucky into the dank, cramped room that smells of hard water and regret.

“What do you want?” Bucky mutters, as he peels off his hoodie, his gloves, his hat. “You want me to tell you how much I love you, how I’m gonna choose to be in your life like your stupid interview said?”

“Bucky—”

“You want me to get down on my knees and suck you off like I’m some goddamn sex toy just waiting for you to flick a switch?”

Steve’s eyes are burning now. “Bucky, please.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Bucky’s almost shouting, now. “You want me to be your boyfriend, your slave, your slut, your fucking girl on the side to make you feel good? You want me all healed up so you can feel like you left no soldier behind? Do you miss me worshiping you? Do you miss me bowing before you and begging for your cock and following you all over the goddamned planet, following you to my death? Fuck you.”

“I don’t want any of that. I just want you to be happy—”

Bucky slams the metal fist into the wall, and chunks of concrete fly loose. “Stop it.”

“I miss you,” Steve says, and then the tear is running down his cheek.

Bucky growls deep in his throat and pulls his fist from the wall. Steve notices, then, it’s not the only time he’s punched it. Bucky flicks a switch and the light overhead sputters on, just a single uncovered bulb spitting amber light across the unfinished space. There’s nothing here but a sleeping bag atop a soiled mattress and a stack of folded clothes. A couple boxes of ramen next to a hot plate and a water kettle. A few scattered journals and a stack of toilet paper rolls.

“Where are you working?” Steve asks. He doesn’t mean to, but suddenly curiosity is needling at him. He must be doing something to afford Brooklyn rent, even in this shitty hole. Steve wants to know everything. He wants to feel like he’s a part of Bucky’s life again. He’ll take whatever he can get.

“Don’t ask me shit like that.”

“Bucky—”

In an instant, Bucky seizes him by the collar and flings him onto the mattress. “What the fuck do you want?” he hisses, pressing his knee into Steve’s stomach. “What do I have to do to make you go away?”

Steve gasps for air. “I just want to make sure you’re okay—”

“You want me to fuck you again? Is that what it’s going to take?”

Heat flashes over Steve’s body—shame at the way he responds to the question. At the blood surging into his dick at the mere suggestion. He feels vile, worse even than the Hydra men on the video. Slowly, he manages to shake his head.

“It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’ll do it if it’ll make you stop. Stop looking for me. Stop thinking about me. Stop fucking talking about me on the news.”

“That was before I knew,” Steve wheezes. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

“You think I give a fuck?”

They stare at each other for a long minute, but Bucky wins out. He’s scooped out every last bit of warmth from his gaze. When Steve looks at him, he only hears the awful noises from the videotape and Bucky’s screams. He turns his head and lets out his breath.

“You still want to live,” Steve says at last. “You’re working. You’ve made a home for yourself. You went to Latvia looking for answers.”

“Because I’m a fucking coward,” Bucky replies.

Steve closes his eyes. “You’re the strongest man I know.”

“Not strong enough.” Bucky laughs bitterly. “Not strong enough to resist their conditioning. Not strong enough to break their control. Not strong enough to keep myself from pulling the trigger, setting the bombs, slitting the throats. Not strong enough to keep them from using me like their goddamn blow-up doll.”

“Bucky—”

And then Bucky’s kissing him, tongue thrusting into Steve’s mouth, one hand shoving back Steve’s hat while the other, the metal hand, clamps around Steve’s hip. It’s rough and ruthless and cruel and Steve squirms beneath him, trying to break free. Bucky snatches a fistful of Steve’s hair and pins him in place with a growl.

“Isn’t this what you want?” Bucky whispers, seething and raw. “You want me to be your slut? You want to remember how it feels, how we used to be?”

Steve shakes his head with a strangled sob. “I just miss you, I want you to be safe—”

Bucky’s face is raw as a fresh wound as he bears his weight against Steve. “It’s too late for that. I’m not that man you miss.”

Steve presses his eyes closed. “Yes, you are.”

Bucky tightens his grip around Steve’s hair with a ragged laugh. “You’re a fucking idiot. You don’t understand anything about the world.”

“I understand that you’re hurting,” Steve says.

“Great. That and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.”

“You must think I got off easy.”

That gives Bucky pause. The sick truth Steve’s been incubating ever since he learned Bucky was alive. One twist of fate, and it could be Steve on the videotape, Bucky leading the Avengers to glory. One wrong step on the train, and Steve could have lost his will. Lost everything.

He would do it if it would keep Bucky safe. So he tells himself. So he wants to believe.

Bucky shakes his head. “You _did_ get off easy.”

“Bucky—”

“You got injected full of that shit by choice. You knew exactly what it would do. Exactly who you’d serve.”

“Bucky, please—”

“And me? I never had a choice. Then when I fell from the train, when they dragged me away, finished what they’d begun—I lost every last hint of choice I could have had. How’s that supposed to make me feel?” he hisses. “How the fuck am I supposed to feel, when every time I look at you, every time I see this man who every fucking instinct in me says I should love, I want to see him bleed and suffer even a fraction like I did?”

“I’d do it,” Steve says.

Bucky snarls again, and pulls Steve’s hair so hard that blood begins to prick against his scalp.

“I’d take your place. I’d take all your pain if I could.”

Bucky huffs out a bitter breath. “Real easy for you to say.”

“You’ve been violated every possible way. I get it,” Steve says. “And I’m sorry. And if I could share that burden, I would. In an instant.”

Bucky’s hips dig into his, but it’s bloodless and harsh. Even as Steve’s body wants to respond, his mind knows he can’t, he shouldn’t. “You’re lying.”

“Buck, I swear—”

“You have no idea how it feels.” Bucky cuts him off with a sneer. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel some monster inside of you, to only have the dimmest knowledge that you don’t want it, to have no way to scrub that heat off of your skin or make it stop or clean it away. You don’t know how it feels to follow orders blindly again and again, orders you know you don't want to follow but feel helpless to ignore. To see no end in sight. To know nothing but pain and the brief stretches of nothingness that cut between it.”

Steve closes his eyes with a whimper. “I’m so sorry.”

“And then sometimes you’re the monster. You’re the demon trapped under your own skin. And you can’t scrub that away, either. Most of the time—” He sighs. “Most of the time you don’t even want to. Because if you’re a monster, then at least you deserve what’s been done to you. You can keep deserving it.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. Please—I can get you the help you need.”

“And then what, you think I’ll miraculously be cured? There’s no fairytale ending here, Steve.” Bucky jams his hands like clamps around Steve’s wrists. “There’s no healing for me, no tearful recovery. I’ll never be what you want from me.”

“How the fuck do you know what I want?” Steve replies.

Bucky glares at him for a moment before shoving himself to his feet.

“I don’t know what I want any more than you do,” Steve says. He props himself up on his elbows; his wrists still ache where Bucky squeezed. “All I know is the person who means more than me to anything in the world is suffering, and I’d do anything to make it stop.”

“You think that,” Bucky says. “But you don’t really mean it.”

Steve struggles to his feet. His limbs feel filled with lead, and his head whirls like a top, unable to make sense of what way to face. He reaches to cup Bucky’s face, but Bucky jerks his head away. Folds his arms and glares at him.

“I can’t change what’s happened. But I can help you change what happens next.” Steve sweeps his hand around the basement. “Please. There’s more for you than this. And I want to help you find it.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. _Sweetheart._ ” The word sounds dipped in poison. “I’ll follow your dumb ass wherever you want. Just like you always wanted, right? Is this what you want to hear?”

“I love you,” Steve whispers. “I never stopped loving you. No matter what you say or do. No matter how you suffer. You don’t have to tell me anything.” He shrugs, sheepish. “I just want you to know.”

Bucky tips his head back against the wall and stares at the pipes running along the unfinished ceiling. Eyes bloodshot, lower lip trembling. Steve wants to still that tremor with his thumb. His lips. He wants to hold Bucky in his arms and keep him from shattering. He’d do anything—he means it. Bucky lost everything following him. Maybe it is only fair he suffers in return.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here uninvited. This is your space, and I don’t want to— _violate_ that.” The word wells up in Steve’s throat like a piece of gristle. “I wanted to see you, but it’s not about what I want. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Bucky’s eyes screw shut. Steve traces the sharp line of his jaw beneath a few days’ stubble; the cleft in Bucky’s chin that he used to kiss, every chance he had. He never took it for granted, but he’s never been so acutely aware of how rare and precious their moments together were until just now. Inches away from Bucky, the both of them impossibly alive decades after they both should have died, and yet there might as well be a galaxy between them. It wouldn’t change anything.

“Stay with me,” Bucky whispers.

The words sound so fragile Steve’s afraid to handle them too much. He answers before he has a chance to reconsider. “Of course. Anything you want. I can—I’ll sleep on the floor—”

Bucky nods; his eyes are glazed with exhaustion. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

Steve crouches to unlace his Converse sneakers with shaking hands. No expectations, and yet it means the world to him. By the time he’s pulled off his shoes and lined them up tidily beside his folded jacket along the wall, Bucky’s already crawled into his sleeping bag, fully clothed. The toes of his combat boots—the same ones he wore as the Winter Soldier, Steve realizes—jut from beneath the unzipped sleeping bag.

“Good night, Buck,” Steve murmurs, as he clicks off the overhead light.

Bucky rolls over to one side, away from Steve, and doesn’t reply.

 

*

 

At first Steve thinks the voices are coming from the street, the foreign tongue pulling him out of sleep with a subtle dissonance. But it’s coming from Bucky. A one-sided conversation in Russian, muted but pained. “Bucky?” Steve whispers. He doesn’t know if he should try to wake him up or if it’s better to let him ride it out.

But then Bucky’s speaking more insistently. His throat is catching on the words, like they’re choking him as he tries to force them out. An argument, or a protest, or a muffled scream—Steve couldn’t say for sure.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers. “Bucky, wake up. It’s okay.”

Bucky tosses the sleeping bag off of himself as he thrashes. Then, as quickly as he began, he goes still. Silence knits itself between them for a minute. Two. Steve’s eyes sink shut and he starts to slip back into sleep.

Then Bucky says: “Do you remember the village?”

Steve holds his breath, like the question is a spell he doesn’t want to break. He turns his head toward Bucky to see the distant streetlamps from the upper windows gleaming in the reflection of Bucky’s eyes as Bucky stares at him. Slowly, Steve releases the air and nods, head swishing against the bunched-up jacket he’s using as a pillow.

“The one in the Alps,” Steve says. “That we found with the Commandos.”

“Yeah.”

Another long stretch of silence. But Bucky’s eyes stay open, watching Steve. Steve rolls onto his side to face Bucky and curls against the edge of Bucky’s grimy mattress.

“I feel like that village sometimes,” Bucky says.

Steve wrinkles his forehead. To Steve, the village was the most beautiful sight in the whole world—still and snow-crowned and perfect. The other guys had set a candlelit dinner for the two of them with scavenged bits of potted meats and pickled vegetables and wine. And then Bucky led him to a bed, a real bed, and for the first time in forever, there was no one for miles around to judge them, to say what they did was wrong—

“I feel like everything in my head is exactly where I left it,” Bucky says. “But the people are all gone.”

“Oh.” Steve curls his chin toward his chest as his face flushes. Here Bucky was finally opening up about his pain, and all Steve could think about was the way Bucky had looked spread beneath him that night.

 _You’re a fucking asshole, Steve Rogers._ Bucky deserved so much more than he could give.

“It helped me get through the worst of it, sometimes. When I’d start to be aware of what was happening around me. I couldn’t stop it or change it.” Bucky exhaled slowly. “So I just . . . left myself.”

Steve curls his hand against the edge of the mattress. He won’t reach any further, he promises himself, but his hand is there if Bucky needs it. “I’m so sorry.”

Bucky’s gaze darts to Steve’s hand, then back to Steve. “I still do it sometimes. A lot of the time. It’s easier that way.”

“Easier than what?”

“Feeling.” Bucky swallows. “Feeling guilty about the people I’ve killed. Feeling all the instincts and reflexes I honed over the years start to surface again.” He runs his tongue against his teeth. “Feeling violated. Like my body and my mind belong to everyone but me.”

“But they do now. You’re in control again.” Steve’s voice wavers. “You’ll never belong to anyone else ever again.”

Bucky shrugs. “Sometimes I think it’d be easier.”

Steve’s pulse rings like iron in his ears. He’s not equipped to counsel Bucky, but SHIELD has plenty of personnel who are. He has to convince him to come in. He’s close, so close.

“When do you feel like yourself?” Steve asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Bucky watches him for a moment. “I don’t know.”

Steve wrenches his eyes shut, feeling an ache deep in his soul. There has to be something he can do, or say . . .

“Can I tell you about the Bucky I remember?” Steve asks.

Bucky makes a pained noise, but slowly, he nods. “Yeah. I guess.”

“He’s loyal. Fiercely loyal.” Steve traces the outline of Bucky’s face in the sodium lights trickling down into the basement. “Courageous as hell. Never backs down from a challenge.”

Bucky pulls his arms up toward his chest.

“He’s smart, but in a quiet way. Not flashy or loud about it. He sits back and thinks and plans.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I dunno about all that.”

“It’s true. You’ve always been the steady hand holding me back when I was too quick to act. Helping me consider my options.” Steve’s smiling, unable to suppress it. “Not that you didn’t lead me into temptation now and then . . .”

Bucky doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t cringe, either. Steve thinks he’ll count that as a victory.

“I can’t remember who I was without remembering you, too,” Bucky says. “We were always braided together, weren’t we? Even when I hated you or resented you . . . it was always you I was tugging against or letting myself be pulled into.”

Steve nods. “I feel the same about you.”

“I’m not that man anymore,” Bucky says.

Steve opens his mouth, but his tongue feels dry. “I—I know.”

“Sometimes, I’m not anyone at all.”

Steve nods against the mattress.

“I don’t know if I want to be.”

“How does it feel when you are?” Steve asks.

Bucky closes his eyes. “Hurts.”

“Oh, god, Buck.” Steve stretches his fingers toward Bucky, but stops himself. “I promise, that can change. You can heal. If you’ll just—”

“I don’t want help.” Bucky tightens in on himself, like he’s trying to shrink. “I don’t want anything.”

“You must want something,” Steve says.

Bucky’s quiet for a long moment. “Nothing I deserve.”

 

*

 

The next time Steve wakes up, it’s because Bucky’s body is pressed against him, side by side, metal hand cupped around his face, Bucky’s lips nudging at his.

Steve sighs softly and parts his mouth to let Bucky’s tongue glide against his lower lip. His body is awakening, unfolding long before his mind is, and his hips rock toward Bucky’s in a slow, lazy circle as they kiss. Metal fingers leave a cool trail against Steve’s cheek as they slip into his hair. The faint whir of servos grazes against his ear.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, as their lips separate. An autonomic response. “I want you, Buck.”

Bucky tugs Steve’s head back, exposing his throat to Bucky’s mouth, and kisses Steve’s chin and his jaw and his neck. Steve shudders as Bucky flicks his tongue against Steve’s collar and sucks at his skin. The sensation of Bucky’s mouth drawing him in sends blood rushing down Steve’s body, his head whirling, dizzy. He lets out his breath in one hot rush as he feels his cock start to swell inside his jeans.

Steve brings one hand up the length of Bucky’s thigh, moving as slowly as he can bear to, feeling Bucky’s muscles quiver beneath him with a gleeful satisfaction. He grips Bucky’s hip and catches Bucky’s lower lip in his teeth, and sucks at the same time he thrusts his hips forward. Bucky sighs, faint, but it sounds contented, so Steve traps Bucky’s thigh between his own and starts to roll Bucky onto his back.

“I want to make you feel good,” Steve says in a voice soft as snow, his lips against Bucky’s cheek. “I want to taste you all over again.”

Then, with horrifying clarity, Steve remembers that this isn’t 1945 and they aren’t huddled inside a pup tent and the stubbled, long-haired Bucky whose thigh Steve’s erection is pressing against is the same man on the video, broken and abused, and he shudders and wants to throw up all over again.

He must have frozen, because Bucky swears to himself and pulls harder at Steve’s hair, locks catching in the joints and snagging. “So fucking do it.”

“Bucky, I can’t.” Steve closes his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

When Steve opens his eyes again, it’s not Bucky staring back at him in the weak dishwater light of dawn. Not really. It’s someone emptied out and angry and hungering. And fuck if Steve doesn’t hate himself all over again because it’s getting him hard once more. It’s making him wish Bucky would pin him down and ravage him the way he did in the Latvian hotel.

But he doesn’t need it and Bucky sure as hell doesn’t need it.

Bucky grinds his hips forward, baring his teeth. “You can’t hurt me.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want—”

“I want you,” Bucky growls, pulling Steve’s hair so hard it stings, “to put that pretty fucking mouth on my dick. If that’s what it takes to shut you up.”

A fire kindles in Steve’s belly. He’s hard, so hard, but he can’t hurt Bucky. He won’t. “I know you’re hurting—”

“Are you trying to tell me what I do and don’t want?”

Steve swallows. Bucky has a point there. “No.”

Bucky’s dark gaze drills into him. It’s edged in violence, and promises more to come. “So fucking prove it,” Bucky says.

Steve closes his eyes and draws a fortifying breath, then kisses Bucky’s cheek. The raspy stubble of his jaw. The hollow at the base of his throat. His chest, though he’s wearing so many layers of shirts that Steve can’t even find his nipple, can’t pull it into his mouth.

He crawls down Bucky’s torso and works his fingers underneath the hems of Bucky’s shirts. He’s still wearing three or four layers, which can’t be pleasant in this badly ventilated basement, but then Steve finds the firm lines of Bucky’s abdomen and hears the tremor of Bucky’s breath as he rolls his shirts up, as he swirls his tongue against Bucky’s navel, nips at his flesh, starts to ease open the button of Bucky’s fly.

Then Bucky goes completely still. His fist unfolds from Steve’s hair and his arms fall down to his sides. Steve stops and bites his lip. Sucks in his breath with an aching groan as he lets go of Bucky’s waistband and pushes up onto his hands to support himself.

“Buck. Talk to me,” Steve says, trying but failing to keep the frustrated edge out of his voice. “What’s going on?”

But the man who looks back down at him isn’t Bucky. Not really. His eyes are glassy; his face is frightfully calm. He reaches down and grips Steve’s chin like he’s assessing him, turning his face from side to side, then he yanks Steve’s face back toward his.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers.

Bucky shuts him up with his teeth, clamping down on Steve’s lower lip. Steve hisses and tries to pull back, but Bucky holds his chin in place. With his metal hand, he seizes Steve by the hips and shoves Steve off of him, pushing Steve onto his back.

The grin that spreads on Bucky’s face as he holds Steve down is rusted and sharp, and Steve can’t help but want to feel its slice.

 _No._ God dammit, he can’t do this. “Bucky, you don’t have to—”

“I swear to god, Rogers. Stop trying to protect me.” He releases Steve’s chin and fumbles with the fastening on Steve’s jeans. “If I want to make you into my little whore, I goddamn will.”

Steve shudders. _Shit._ All it takes is one gruff order from Bucky and he’s putty. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

Bucky answers by wrapping a dry hand around Steve’s cock and giving him a sharp tug.

The friction, the rough pain of it sets Steve’s head spinning. He grits his teeth and presses his head back against the concrete floor. “Jesus, Buck—”

Bucky’s lips peel back, baring his teeth. “I don’t remember you complaining before.”

“I—I’m not complaining, I just—” Steve cuts himself off as Bucky’s dry skin pulls harder. He’s gripping Steve like a gun, and it feels wonderful, it _hurts_ , it’s too much all at once, and Steve’s trying to stay in the moment—right here, right now, with Bucky—but his mind keeps festering with the black and white footage from the vault—

“That’s more like it.” Bucky uses his metal arm to shove Steve’s jeans and boxers further down his legs. “That’s the filthy slut I remember.”

Steve curls his hands into fists at his sides. He doesn’t want to touch Bucky, not without his permission, but he’s got to grab onto something. It’s too much, pressing against that razor’s edge between wonderful and awful, not only the physical sensation but the warring images in his head. His hips buck upward, involuntary, riding the rhythm of Bucky’s strokes.

Cold metal trails up the inside of Steve’s thighs, making him suck in his breath. Bucky teases at the soft skin behind his balls, his touch icy, then slides one finger inside Steve.

Steve clenches instantly, the cold sending a shock through him. Not bad, just unexpected. Bucky laughs, low and dark, to himself and circles his fingers around the base of Steve’s cock. Flicks his tongue in a slow circle around the head, his expression intense.

“You feel incredible,” Steve says softly. Like maybe gentle encouragement is what he needs to make him feel safe.

But Bucky just shakes his head. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m serious, Buck—”

A second finger joins the first inside Steve, cold and powerful. “I’m a goddamned nightmare.”

Bucky closes his mouth around Steve’s cock and shoves his lips as far down as he can. Steve groans. Between his hot mouth and his cold fingers, pressing deeper and deeper inside him, he can hardly see straight. He thrusts his hips up to meet Bucky’s mouth, but Bucky’s working his tongue recklessly against thick veins, taking Steve as deep as he can, moving his lips up and down without any grace.

It’s raw and cruel—Bucky works himself on Steve’s shaft like he’s waging a war. And the fingers probing inside him, pushing against just the right spot, send sparks swirling behind Steve’s eyes. He’s the reckless, unhinged Bucky Steve remembers from after the labor camp, but also the calculated precision of the Winter Soldier and Steve knows it’s wrong, knows he shouldn’t find it so hot, but he’ll never be anything but weak and pliant for this man. No matter what form he takes. He wants Bucky, the good and the bad, the wounded and the strong, and he’ll do anything and let him do anything to have him once more.

Bucky pulls back from his cock to glower at him, humorless and intense. He says something harsh in Russian and licks at the pre-come already glistening on his lips. Steve closes his eyes with a gasp and clamps around Bucky’s fingers, welcomes that mechanical force shoving into him.

Bucky closes his mouth around Steve’s cock again, heedless of his teeth or any sort of rhythm, but he’s so forceful about it that it doesn’t matter. Steve wants to cup his face, grab his hair, do _some_ thing, but he doesn’t want to startle him. So he claws at the hard concrete floor and grits his teeth so hard he thinks they’ll crack. “Buck—I’m gonna come—”

Bucky rams his fingers deeper into Steve and hollows out his cheeks as he sucks, and Steve is gone. He sinks into hot white bliss, and the world melts away around him. For a moment, he can believe they’re two dumb kids falling in love for the first time, and nothing can ever hurt them, can ever keep them apart.

He opens his eyes, chest heaving. Bucky sits back on his feet and stares somewhere over Steve’s head. Bucky’s mouth twitches; he wipes it on the back of his hoodie sleeve.

“Hey.” Steve reaches out to brush his hand against Bucky’s thigh, feeling the cords of muscle beneath his thick jeans. “You’re amazing.”

Bucky huffs and doesn’t look at him.

“If you want— _if_ you want—then tell me how I can get you off.” Steve smiles, doing his best not to be unnerved. “I miss the way you taste. I miss the way you feel face to face with me, pressed between my thighs.”

“Stop it.” Bucky screws his eyes shut. “Just stop.”

Steve swallows. Maybe he’s not thinking as clearly as he should be in his post-orgasmic haze. “I was only offering.”

“I don’t want you touching me.” Bucky’s arm whirs as he clenches a fist. “I don’t want—anyone in charge, in control—”

The tears are spilling down his cheeks then. Steve lurches, sitting up, but Bucky just stares down at his hands as they catch the tears like he doesn’t understand. “Bucky.” Steve brings his hands to Bucky’s face, but stops short of touching him. “Please.”

With a sigh like something ripping open, Bucky nods.

Steve brushes away the corner of one of Bucky’s eyes with his thumb. Then mirrors the action on his other eye. He’s moving as gently as he can, just barely making contact with those sharp cheekbones cloaked in stubble. Bucky won’t lift his gaze to look at him, but Steve doesn’t care. He pushes the stringy locks of Bucky’s hair back from his face and tucks them behind his ears on either side. Gently cups his palms around Bucky’s cheeks.

Bucky looks at him then. His eyes are glassy and huge, heavy with things Steve can only imagine. Steve opens his mouth, but can’t find the right words for what he wants to say. Forgiveness? Acceptance? Love? He wants to give him everything, but that might not be what Bucky needs.

Bucky sags forward, then, and curls around Steve’s chest with a ferocious grip. Now Steve’s choking up. He’s the idiot with his pants around his knees, after all, but all he wants is to see Bucky smiling, happy, free.

“Come with me, Bucky.” Steve brushes his fingers along Bucky’s spine. “Let me help you.”

Bucky’s chest rises and falls against his, uneven. “I’m a bad person. There’s no helping me.”

“You’re not.” Steve presses a kiss against his temple. “You weren’t in control. None of it was you.”

“It was me, though.” Bucky pulls tighter. “My body. My finger on the trigger. I was still there.”

“Then let us help you.”

Bucky’s silent for a long moment. Steve can’t bring himself to look at his eyes. He’s afraid he’ll see that same emptiness from before. But then Bucky’s fingers flex and contract against Steve’s back, and slowly, faintly, he nods into Steve’s neck.

“Okay.”

Steve fights back the urge to cheer, to smother him in kisses. “Thank you,” he whispers instead.

“But you have to promise me one thing.”

“Of course.” Steve leans back, but kept his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. His smile feels fragile, but he’s holding it as gently as he can. “Anything for you.”

“If this doesn’t work, if I don’t like it . . . You’ve gotta believe me when I say that. You’ve got to respect what I choose.”

There’s something threatening in those words, but Steve can’t bear to look at it too closely. It’s going to work, and Bucky will see that. The Avengers can get the best psychiatrists, the most advanced techniques . . . It’s going to be fine. It has to be.

“I promise,” Steve says.

Bucky pulls back from him. Fixes him with that hard, cold gaze. Then, slowly, he unfolds. “Then let’s go.”

 _I love you, Buck,_ Steve thinks, as he watches Bucky gather his things. There isn’t much—a few journals, a backpack with supplies. _We’ll get through this together._

But he can’t promise it, not really.

He can’t promise anything.


	4. ii.

**ii.**

Steve dreams of falling. The wind rips through his hair like claws and strips away his skin. Splintered rocks bite down on him and hold him in place. They hold him still until the men come for him.

Steve dreams of being dragged away, iron coiling around his limbs like snakes, men’s faces crowding around him as a collection of eyes and teeth and leers. He dreams of hands along his back, his thighs, his mouth. Fingers probing and pulling. Immobilized, he feels them all, he surrenders to them all, and feels nothing in return.

He dreams of a pulse flickering and snuffing under his thumb. The pulse belongs to countless faces. Sometimes it’s Bucky’s face. Sometimes it’s his own.

 

*

 

For the first month of therapy, he isn’t allowed to see Bucky.

“Allowed” is perhaps not the right word. “Invited,” he suspects, is more correct. The government is keeping the whole matter quiet, not even acknowledging the Winter Soldier’s capture, and from what little bits Coulson and Natasha leak to Steve, it’s been a very intensive process. But it’s ultimately self-directed. It’s Bucky’s choice to make. And whatever choices he’s making, Steve is apparently not involved.

It stings, but not so bad as any single thing Bucky’s endured. It chafes at Steve’s thoughts like a pebble in his shoe as the Avengers are called to yet another conflict, yet another dispute, yet another crisis halfway around the world.

Steve surrendered the tape to Bucky’s therapy team the first chance he could get. Otherwise he thinks he’d watch it still, tormenting himself over and over. It doesn’t help. He still sees it when he closes his eyes and hears it in the gaps between his breaths.

“You should have told me,” Sam says one day as they cool down from their weight routine. “You’re a big dude, Cap, but even you aren’t big enough to carry everything inside of you. You’ve got to let some shit go.”

“It wasn’t mine to let go,” Steve says.

Sam just raises one eyebrow. “Don’t be so sure.”

 

*

 

Then they’re coming back from a mission in Kuala Lumpur and Steve’s dusty and bloodied and exhausted as he enters the main tower from the helideck and there are five armed guards waiting to escort him to an undisclosed location and he _knows_.

“Do I have time to shower first?” he asks, and after a stern and whispered consultation with someone on the radio, they nod.

He spends too long in the shower, obsessing over every rapidly-healing bruise and the hairs he hasn’t trimmed back and wondering whether he should shave again. Suddenly none of his briefs or his jeans or his shirts seem to fit him just right. And it doesn’t matter, he tells himself it doesn’t matter, he’ll be amazed if Bucky wants to so much as look at him, but he can’t stop himself from obsessing like this is somehow a date.

He’s never taken Bucky on a date. He’s been on dates _with_ Bucky, but it’s far from the same thing, dangling a girl from one arm while his other hand is trapped between Bucky’s thighs underneath the table. He’s never taken Bucky on a date, and he probably never will.

The tactful knock on his suite door reminds him he’s taking too long, so he gives up and follows the guards to the waiting unmarked SUV in the parking garage.

A long car ride later into upstate New York, they wind into the driveway of a pleasant ivy-covered brick mansion, and are greeted by a host of nurses, orderlies . . . and more guards. “Is this really necessary?” Steve asks under his breath, but no one feels obligated to respond. They lead him into a sitting room—it feels needlessly large, given that aside from the guards and orderlies, no one else seems to live here—and he waits.

And waits.

And then Bucky is there, lingering in the doorway, watching him like he’s afraid to be caught looking. One foot already poised behind him, ready to turn and run.

Steve stands.

Bucky glances over his shoulder and says something Steve can’t hear. Floorboards creak as guards retreat into the shadows, leaving them completely alone. Then Bucky shuffles into the room.

He looks . . . good. Warm. Healthy. No dark circles under his eyes, no obvious bruises or scars. He’s wearing a white tank top and loose white sweatpants, and his hair is clean and pulled back from his face in a bun. Steve’s smiling at the sight of him, smiling so hard it hurts, but Bucky isn’t smiling back. His arms are wrapped around his waist and he settles himself into the deep corner of a sofa opposite the one where Steve was sitting and pulls his knees up to his chin.

“Hey,” Bucky says.

There are a million things Steve wants to say, and none of them feel good enough. Nothing can possibly cover how happy he is to see Bucky alive and well and cared for. And how pained he feels that he wasn’t a part of it. But it’s stupid, so stupid. So he forces himself to sit down and keep smiling hard.

“You look great, Buck.”

Bucky shrugs with his real arm. “Thanks.”

Steve laces his fingers together between his knees and leans forward. Still scrounging for something to say. “How are you liking it here?”

Bucky closes his eyes in a wince. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.” Bucky shakes his head. “Try to make small talk. Make me comfortable or whatever.”

“Okay. Okay, sorry.” Steve runs his tongue along the edge of his teeth, even more lost now than he was before. “I just want to make sure you’re—”

“I spend ten hours a day doing different kinds of therapy, okay? It’s not a fucking resort.”

Steve grimaces. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s work,” Bucky says, his eyes hard. “But I knew it would be.”

“Right. Of course.” Steve bites back everything more he wants to say—encouraging words or dumb platitudes or some sort of rallying speech. “I’m just—I’m proud of you for sticking with it, for doing whatever—”

“They want me to go public.” Bucky drops his legs out of his grasp. “Want to hold a big press conference.”

“Oh, god. That's a lot.” Steve frowns.

“We’re gonna explain the circumstances of who I am, what I was . . . The president will do this big fucking pardon, give me a Prisoner of War medal, all that bullshit.”

Steve sinks back into the chair. A wave of restless energy rolls through him, nerves and eagerness and fear all at once. “That’s . . . that’s big.”

Bucky nods, not meeting his eyes.

“Are you—Do you think you’re ready for that?”

Bucky doesn’t answer for a long minute as he studies some fixed point on the carpet. Without Bucky’s gaze on him, Steve finds himself studying the slope of Bucky’s forehead and nose. He’d memorized it, but lost it again, and now it’s before him once more, as familiar as visiting an old haunt. His cheekbones aren’t quite as sharp as before, softened a little by proper nutrition and care, and without the perpetual stubble he wore while he was on the run, he seems to have shaved off years of exhaustion.

The angle of his neck draws Steve’s eye. He’s every bit the muscular brute that pummeled Steve on the helicarrier. And yet there’s a fineness to it, the way it disappears into thick shoulders. With his hair pulled back, Steve can see the soft patch of skin just beneath Bucky’s earlobe that he loved to kiss, in the dark of their one-room flat, when they were too tired for anything more and he just wanted to hear Bucky sigh. When all he wanted was to know Bucky was content, in that moment if nothing else; that he didn’t regret throwing his lot in with Steve, that he didn’t begrudge him their secret, silent life.

Steve wants nothing more than to kiss him there again. Press his nose against Bucky’s hair and breathe in his scent. He doesn’t need anything more, he tells himself. Only that soft sigh that meant everything would be all right.

It’s far too much for him to ask.

“My doctors think I’m ready,” Bucky says.

He looks at Steve now, blue eyes sharp as icicles, and Steve’s stomach churns as if he’s been caught in the act. He can’t think about so much as touching Bucky. It’s the last thing he needs right now. He may never want it ever again. Everything they did over the past few months—it was only Bucky’s instinct and memories taking over. It doesn’t mean anything. Bucky is his own person now, for the first time in decades, and Steve has no right—none—to ask anything of him.

“Do you feel ready?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs again.

“I—I’m sure they wouldn’t ask you to do anything you weren’t ready for.” He wants to think that’s true. Stark and Coulson promised the very best for Bucky. He can’t believe anything less.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says. “They asked me to talk to you.”

Steve ‘s stomach clenches like bracing for a punch. But the punch has already landed. This meeting wasn’t Bucky’s idea. One whole month, and Bucky never asked about him, never asked to see him, and even now he’s only doing it because they made him.

He thinks Sam might be right. He can’t carry everything around forever. Finally he feels all of his frustration welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“I thought . . . what the hell. Maybe you could go with me,” Bucky says.

Steve jerks his head up. “Where?”

“The ceremony in DC.”

“Oh, god, Buck. It’s—I mean, those things are always circuses.” Steve blinks away tears and steps into his commander mode. Issuing a briefing to his troops—no time to cry when he’s doing that. “You’re just going to get shuttled from press conference to press conference, photo ops, meals, handshaking—” Steve swallows. “I mean—Of course I’ll go. No one should have to face that alone. Yes. I’d love to.” He makes himself smile, but knows it looks so fake.

“Thanks,” Bucky says. No emotion behind it.

Steve looks at him again. Bucky’s practically glowing, dressed in white, his metal arm clean and his skin freshly scrubbed. He’s like an angel, he’s like a miraculous empty village in the middle of enemy territory. Now that Steve’s finally looking at him, he can’t look away.

Maybe it’s only Steve’s own instincts, his own memories, that are making him feel this way. He’s in love with the James Barnes he got killed back in the war. He doesn’t know this Bucky at all, not really—not beyond the awful truths about him he’s witnessed, not beyond the frantic few nights they’ve spent waging different kinds of war.

Bucky stands up and takes a hesitant step toward Steve.

Steve lifts his head to look up at him. Slowly, Bucky runs the back of his right hand against Steve’s cheek, knuckles scraping against his temple, his cheekbone, down to rasp against his lips. A shiver tears through Steve, but he keeps his gaze on Bucky, afraid to break whatever spell they’re under. Bucky rolls his hand forward and brushes his thumb back over Steve’s lower lip again. This time, Steve has to close his eyes to stifle his response. He wants so badly to wrap his mouth around Bucky’s thumb, to kiss him, draw him in, and it’s taking every ounce of restraint in him to stay passive and unmoving where he is. The touch burns like poison where Bucky touches him, but aches with cold as soon as he pulls his hand away.

“They knew all about you,” Bucky says.

Steve opens his eyes and waits for his breathing to return to normal before he looks back up at Bucky. “Your doctors?”

Bucky huffs out through his nose and looks away. “Hydra knew what you meant to me. And they used it against me.”

The words are like ice water in Steve’s veins. “I—I’m sorry, Buck. I had no idea.”

“They made me hate you. Made me think you never loved me. They wanted to convince me all the ways you’d betrayed me, and that only Hydra could care for me now, only Hydra was worthy of my . . .” His lip curls back like he’s bit into something rotten. “ _Loyalty._ ”

Bile singes at the back of Steve’s throat. “You know that’s not true.”

“It felt real enough. At the time.” Bucky huffs again and folds his arms with a soft sigh of metal plates. “Even now, I feel it.”

“Loyalty to them?” Steve asks.

Bucky laughs drily. “Yeah. I wish.” He takes a step back. “The . . . the yearning I felt for you before. It’s unbearable, how much I feel it still. But at the same time . . .” He shrugs. “I feel this empty hatred for you after they carved the rest out of me.”

Steve forces himself to look down. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not rational,” Bucky continues. “I know that now.” But it sounds like something he’s only repeating from a therapist.

“I’m so sorry. For everything, Buck. I—I don’t know what else to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Bucky shrugs. “It’s not your fault.”

But Steve isn’t sure whether that’s true.

 

*

 

The “bisexual Captain America” story has finally dropped out of the news cycle, thanks to the savvy Avengers PR team and Steve’s own refusal to entertain any requests for more information. But when the Winter Soldier story breaks, it’ll be a thousand times worse. Steve leaves his phone back in his Avengers Tower suite—the constant notifications he’s about to get will only kill the battery, anyway—and fiddles with his cufflinks while he waits for the quinjet to arrive with Bucky in tow.

“The press release will go live while you’re in the air,” Maria Hill tells him, reviewing the clipboard in front of her as she ushers Steve toward the helipad. “The official White House schedule mentions only that a special press briefing will take place, followed by a medal ceremony, but once the story releases, every journalist worth their shit will put two and two together. So expect a crowd.”

“And the dinner and reception?” Steve asks.

“No cameras or recording devices except for official approved photographers. Reporters will be under strict rules that nothing stated in the reception is to be taken on the record. Barnes isn’t going to take any questions, and neither are you.” She narrows her eyes. “Understood?”

“You got it.” Steve glances around the helipad. “Umm . . . Where are the others?”

Maria frowns. “Others?”

“Tony?” Steve asks. “Sam? Natasha?”

“Oh, no.” She shakes her head. “This is all you and Barnes. We’re going for . . . understated. A solemn affair.” Maria lowers her voice. “You take Stark with you and it turns into a celebrity gala. We want something a little more under the radar.”

“You really think it’ll stay that way?” Steve asks. “These things have a way of blowing up on us.”

“Well, Cap, I’m going to leave that in your capable hands.”

“No causing a controversy. Got it.” He grimaces. “Listen, if you’re still getting those bomb threats from those homophobes—”

“It’s more than just that, Cap. Barnes—the Winter Soldier, I mean . . .” Maria sighs. “He killed a lot of people. For Hydra. And despite the circumstances, many Americans are going to have trouble getting past that. We need this event to go as smoothly as possible—not a single shred of doubt cast on his character as James Barnes.”

Steve takes a deep breath and shoves his hands into his pockets. “All right. I can manage that.”

“Thanks, Cap.” She makes a move like she’s going to slug him on the bicep, then seems to think better of it. Overhead, the quinjet hums as it lowers toward the pad. “Good luck, soldier.”

Steve’s stomach flips over, but he manages a sly salute to bid her farewell. The jet settles onto the pad, and the ramp opens, cavernous. It’s time.

He strides up the ramp, heart lodged in his throat, and nearly trips over himself at the sight of Bucky fastened into one of the seats.

He’s cut his hair and parted it to one side, looking every bit the same style as the Bucky who fought at Steve’s side across the battlefronts of Europe. His outfit, though, is thoroughly modern. Beneath a stylish navy peacoat, he’s wearing a cobalt blue suit with black lapels and a skinny black tie. The color brings his eyes to vivid life, and Steve stutters in awe of it as Bucky’s gaze drifts toward his.

“Hey,” Bucky says. His voice sounds stronger than when Steve met with him the previous week. A faint smile twists his full lips, and it sends Steve’s pulse racing.

“You look . . . amazing.” Steve sinks down into the jump seat opposite Bucky and buckles himself in. “I feel like a bum.”

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” Bucky asks wryly.

The quinjet lifts off. Steve drums his hands against his thighs, unsure what else to say. Bucky seems . . . calm. In control. But he supposes his therapists wouldn’t have agreed to all this if they didn’t think he was. Steve hates this, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to ask about what Bucky’s been through or whether he should. He wants to know everything—but only if Bucky wants him to know.

He just wants to be . . .

He wants to be in Bucky’s life again. They went through almost every day together, sharing meals, sharing a bed, sharing each other’s breaths and warmth and skin. But now decades and circumstances have ripped apart the seams that bound them, and Steve has no idea whether they can ever stitch together again. He wants to. God, he wants to, with a need that burns under his ribs and presses down on him like the tide. But he doesn’t know if it’s possible. And even whether it should be if it is.

“Hey,” Bucky says, nudging Steve’s foot with his own.

Steve looks up, then realizes how worried he must look—the face Natasha calls his Dad Face—and he reddens. “Sorry.”

“Okay, first of all, I swear, if you don’t stop apologizing . . .”

Steve’s smile deepens.

“And second of all . . .” Bucky’s expression softens. “Just do me a favor, okay?”

“Of course.” Steve sits up straighter. He can’t express how eager he is for Bucky to ask anything of him—how desperately he wants to make Bucky happy.

“Stop trying so goddamned hard.” Bucky’s cool gaze rests on him. “You’re not my nurse. You’re not my therapist. And you’re not my boyfriend. You don’t have to treat me like a fucking pane of glass or some broken thing you have to fix.”

Steve cringes. For some reason, the statement hurts, more than he expects it to. Does he want to be Bucky’s nurse, his boyfriend? If he isn’t any of those things, then what is he to Bucky?

“So stop stressing yourself, okay? You look like you’re about to give yourself an aneurysm. Seriously.” Bucky nudges Steve’s foot with his own. “Relax.”

Steve looks down at where their feet rest side by side: Bucky’s gleaming designer dress shoes and his own slightly scuffed ones, pilfered from a trunk sale on his behalf by the Avengers PR team. He’d nudge Bucky back, but he’d hate to mess up the shine. “Okay. That’s fair.”

Bucky nods, his tongue running along his teeth. His smile’s gone.

“But I’m not sure what it is you _do_ want me to be.”

Bucky’s quiet for a long minute. Steve catches himself hoping—catches himself being reeled in on that hook of longing, desperate for Bucky to say some magic phrase that’ll set right all the conflicting emotions in Steve’s heart. The pent-up yearning he feels for the Bucky he loved before and the guilt he feels for who that Bucky became, for everything that Bucky endured. The unanswered question of who Bucky is now. Whether he’s still the man Steve loved. Whether Steve can love him still.

And he realizes in that minute just how badly he wants to. Not with the same intense, urgent lust he’s felt around Bucky over their last few encounters—though that’s there still—but with this ache at finding something that’s been missing from him for far too long. The part of his soul he left in the snowy Alps, in his life before. It was Bucky—his wit, his smile, his laugh, his tears. It was the feeling of two trees sprouting from the same root, and no matter how wide their branches stretched, they remained joined, basking in the same sunlight, pulling life from the same cool earth.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says quietly. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing against the crisp cut of his white shirt collar. “I just didn’t want to do this alone.”

“You never have to do this alone,” Steve tells him.

For the rest of the trip, Bucky doesn’t reply.

 

*

 

A SHIELD aide briefs them as soon as they land on the White House lawn, spouting off pull quotes from the past hour’s news commentary following the Avengers press release regarding the identity and ongoing rehabilitation of the Winter Soldier. Mostly positive; some dissent; a few shrill talking heads calling for Barnes to be prosecuted (or, Steve suspects, executed, but the aide is kind enough to leave that out). Numerous congresspeople, particularly veterans and former prisoners of war themselves, have expressed their sympathy and solidarity with Barnes. The White House is carefully vetting its short list of invitees for the medal ceremony.

(Steve also catches the aide scrolling through Twitter, spotting several grainy photographs of the Winter Soldier captioned “new brain who dis,” but figures it’s best not to ask.)

The medal ceremony proceeds without issue. Bucky is solemn but charismatic as President Ellis drapes the Prisoner of War medal around his neck and thanks him for his outstanding bravery and resilience after enduring unspeakable cruelty over the decades. A group of POW-MIA representatives give Bucky a standing ovation, which he tolerates with a polite smile. Steve can’t avoid the roving photographers and journalists with their press credentials, but he stays in the back row, away from the dais. This is Bucky’s moment, and like Maria said, the best he can do is offer his silent support.

Bucky is whisked off for further photo ops with President Ellis when the ceremony ends, and Steve paces the rose garden with his hands in his pockets. He catches himself reaching for his phone multiple times, wanting to check the social media situation or see if Sam or Natasha have sent him any text updates. But the silence is better. He lived twenty-seven years without being constantly plugged in to the rest of the world; he can survive a few hours more.

Then the aide is coming for Steve, but Bucky isn’t with him. Went ahead with his designated Secret Service entourage, the aide explains—just to be safe. They’re off to the Hay-Adams Hotel for a banquet dinner and reception with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the handpicked veterans and former prisoners of war who are there to add a laurel of legitimacy around Sergeant Barnes. Steve’s seated at the head table, but several seats down from Bucky; after a few tries to catch Bucky’s eye over their lemon orzo salmon, he gives up and turns his attention to the Vietnam veteran congressman discussing his years spent as a prisoner of the Viet Cong.

The reception drags on. And on. Steve mills around, shaking hands, accepting the solemn thanks from numerous politicians for his years of service and his work bringing down Hydra and liberating Sergeant Barnes. Liberating—that’s the word they’re going with, then. Steve wonders just what’s been said about the Winter Soldier’s treatment. He wonders what memes are swirling around now. He wonders how brainwashing gets hashtagged, how decades of torture and rape and coerced violence get sanitized down into soundbytes that spread around the globe. He wonders if they left any scrap of privacy for Bucky, or if every last detail of the atrocities committed against him had to be trotted out to try to justify a presidential pardon.

He wonders, but he knows better than to ask. He suspects he’ll find out the answer far too soon.

Steve keeps scanning the banquet room—he can’t help himself—and realizes he hasn’t laid eyes on Bucky in several minutes. Panic claws its way up Steve’s throat and latches on there. He can’t breathe. He spots the Secret Service guards, standing at attention the same places they’ve been standing all reception, none of them concerned. But he remembers how quickly the Soldier could disappear. He knows how easily Bucky can hide when he doesn’t want to be found.

Steve charges down from the banquet stage; immediately his own guards are on him, following just over his shoulder. He turns to them and folds his arms. “Where’s Barnes?”

They exchange a look before staring straight ahead once more.

“Barnes isn’t on the reception floor. Either you know where he is, or you don’t,” Steve snaps. “So which is it?”

Another look. Finally, the woman touches her earpiece and cups her hand over her mouth. “Status update on Star,” she says, as if she thinks she can keep Steve from hearing.

“Who wants to know?” the earpiece responds, loud enough for Steve’s enhanced hearing to catch.

“Shield.”

A pause. Steve’s stomach tightens. Then: “Interior restroom. We’re posted at only point of ingress.”

Steve doesn’t bother to let the woman relay the information; he just charges toward the restroom corridor. As he passes one of the television monitors, tuned to a twenty-four hour news channel, the sound of Bucky’s screams surrounds him. He flinches and glances toward the screen and instantly nausea’s burning a hole in him.

They’re playing clips from the Latvian vault tape.

“Captain Rogers.” The SHIELD aide is rushing toward him from the banquet room. “Captain Rogers, if you would kindly return to the banquet—”

“Who did this?”

The voice seems to come from some dark corner within Steve, rusty and brutal and furious. The aide takes a hasty step back, and her shoulders draw up, defensive. “Captain Rogers—”

“Coulson promised me this wouldn’t be released.” Steve jams his finger at the TV screen. “So do you wanna tell me why it’s playing on the national news?”

The aide’s eyelashes flutter as she pieces together some bullshit PR response. “Director Coulson thought a brief clip might help build sympathy—”

“Build sympathy.” Steve stares through her. “You’re putting evidence of the most horrible atrocities ever committed against this man on television, for everyone to see, everyone to dissect—and you’re calling it sympathy.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Well, it’s better than letting them call him a criminal.”

Steve glares at her a moment longer. Then he turns on his heel without a word and stalks toward the restrooms.

“Captain Rogers, if you’d just let me explain—”

Steve shoves through the men’s room door, past Bucky’s contingent of guards, then sinks against the door from the other side. Flips the lock.

The bathroom is black marble and stainless steel, gently but cleanly lit. Steve approaches the long row of sinks and splashes water on his face, then stares at himself. At his trimmed hair and immaculately tied bowtie and broad shoulders and unblemished face. Steve Rogers, the man who soaked up all the sunlight for himself and left Bucky in the shadows.

He thrusts his fist through the mirror and sends glass spraying around him.

It barely tickles against his fist. Glass slices open the skin between his knuckles, opening up bloody gashes, but by the time he runs his hand under the faucet to wash the blood away, the wounds have already closed. The anger’s still churning inside him, a turbine raging.

Steve reaches into the mirror frame and tears free a long, jagged wedge. Raises the tip to his face. He wonders how hard he’d have to carve to make the wound last. How many times he’d have to slice to make a mark.

“The fuck are you doing.”

Two loafers pop out from under the bank of sinks. Steve drops into a crouch and peers underneath the counter. Bucky’s huddled in the far corner, face hidden behind the sink pipes. Only the medal dangling from his neck catches any reflection of the bathroom lighting.

Steve sighs and crawls under the counter with him.

“Don’t.” Bucky pulls his legs back in and tucks his knees under his chin. “Go. You’ve got your adoring public to please.”

“They’re here for you,” Steve says.

Bucky makes a joyless laugh. “We both know that’s not true.”

Steve sighs and settles himself on the cool marble floor away from the sinks, his back against the row of stalls. Bucky isn’t looking at him, at least that he can tell. For the first time in hours, Steve lets his face relax. He hadn’t realized how much his muscles were hurting from holding that fake smile in place.

“I didn’t know they were going to release the tape,” Steve says. “When I gave it to Coulson, I made him promise—”

“It was my choice.”

Steve’s brow furrows.

“Coulson suggested it—to demonstrate, you know, the brainwashing process. Make it more tangible for people, I guess. So they could see how I went from waking up to falling under Hydra’s control.” He speaks slowly, with a clipped edge to his tone, like he’s rehearsed this. “Drive home the point that I wasn’t responsible.”

Steve swallows. “But that tape—”

“That’s all they’re showing from it.” Bucky shrugs. “Coulson said the original’s been destroyed.”

Steve somehow doubts that, but he doesn’t say anything in response. Bucky’s choice. It was Bucky’s choice. He tells himself over and over: that fact’s more important than Steve’s own feelings on the matter. It’s Bucky’s life now, finally, and Steve can’t direct it or control it any more than anyone else.

There may not be room for him in it at all.

“You remember those long watches we’d have to take outside the Hydra camps?” Bucky finally says. “I’d tie myself to a tree branch and just lie there for hours. Waiting and waiting for something to happen, something that maybe never would.”

A real smile washes over Steve this time. “I remember you used to get bored out of your skull.” Steve remembers plenty more besides. Once, Bucky radioed him back at base; described in torturous detail everything he planned to do to Steve when he got back to camp. It was good, it was wonderful, and it makes Steve feel sick all over again with longing for an innocent belief in something he may never have again.

“That’s how it’s like right now.” Bucky’s legs drop down again. “Like I’m waiting and waiting for some kind of sign, and it might never come.”

Steve lowers his head.

“Doctors said I’m supposed to be my own sign. Be the change I want, you know, that kind of crap.” Bucky exhales. “That’s why I’m here. To move on, maybe lay the groundwork for some kind of normal life afterward.”

“That’s great,” Steve says. “Really—as dumb as the ceremony itself can be, I think you’ll be really glad you did this.”

“Maybe.” Bucky slinks out from under the sinks. “But it kinda just feels like a thing that’s happening to me again.”

Bucky stands up and takes a few tentative steps toward Steve. Aside from he scowl carved on his face, he still looks every bit the handsome, polished red carpet icon Steve saw on the quinjet. Steve stands, too, to look at him eye to eye.

“You’re in charge now, Buck. I mean it.” Steve’s smile begins to ache again. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Not ever again.”

“And what about the things I _do_ want?”

Bucky’s pulse is ticking beneath his jaw. Steve watches it for a moment, then takes in his stance, curled forward, and the dark and murky expression on his face. He looks at Steve like he’s a drowning man, and Steve can’t even begin to imagine how it feels.

“I want you, Steve.”

Static electricity crackles through Steve. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or scared or confused—probably all of that and more.

“It’s like this . . . heartbeat. This thing that’s always there.”

Bucky’s stance tightens like he’s a coiled spring. Steve wonders, when he looks at him, how it might feel for that spring to snap. He thinks he might welcome it, the pain it would bring to him. Maybe it’s what he deserves.

“I wake up thinking of you,” Bucky says. “I dream of the way we used to be. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t right and it’s built on this old foundation that’s probably all rotted away.”

Steve clenches his jaw as they stare at each other, half a foot between them. He wants Bucky so bad he can’t bear it, the want a deeply rooted tree. He can’t remember it ever being a sapling or a seed. It’s not a thing he can tear out. Never could then and can’t now.

“The doctors helped me set it aside. We focused on pretty much everything but you for a long while.” Bucky swallows. “But I don’t know if I can do that anymore.”

Steve closes his eyes. It hurts more than he thought to hear it out loud: that he was a dark and prickly thing that had to be extracted to allow Bucky to heal.

“I guess I’d forgotten how it was,” Steve says. “Intense and consuming, and yet we had to keep it secret.” He sighs. “I guess that’s bound to fuck anything up.”

“But we don’t live that life anymore.” Bucky takes another step toward him, eyes narrowing like a scope finding its focus. “We aren’t those people anymore.”

Steve opens his mouth, but it’s dry. His heart is racing as Bucky’s face looms closer. He can smell Bucky’s cologne, something rich and woodsy and expensive, and yet it smells so much like warm bodies knotted together beneath Swiss pine trees and silent, artless kisses under a blanket worn too thin. It smells like the charcoals Steve used to sketch Bucky, sprawled naked across their couch, holding perfectly still for the most part except for when he couldn’t stand it and had to look over his shoulder at Steve with the filthiest, sweetest grin.

“It wasn’t always such a bad life,” Steve says.

“No.” Bucky stops before him, eyes dark as that charcoal. “But it’s time for a new one.”

Steve’s lips are hanging open. He can’t catch his breath. After over a month away from Bucky, he’d managed to convince himself that maybe Bucky’s life really would be better without him in it. But now, with Bucky right in front of him again, it’s too painful to think about once more.

“I’m not broken,” Bucky says, but he surrounds the words in barbed wire. “If I want these things—a normal life, the world’s acceptance, _you_ —then I can’t be broken. Right?”

Steve’s vision goes watery. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

“They didn’t break me. Right? If they broke me, I wouldn’t want this.”

Bucky rests the thumb of his right hand against Steve’s jugular. His pulse hammers against Bucky’s thumb; it’s all he can bear not to gasp at the heat that spreads from the contact. After so long without Bucky touching him—without anyone—

“I’m not broken.”

His voice wavers as his fingers slide around the back of Steve’s neck. They graze against his hairline, and Steve feels acutely aware of every slight shift, every change in pressure, as Bucky’s face draws toward his.

“Please,” Bucky whispers, his breath licking fire across Steve’s cheek as Bucky leans over one of Steve’s shoulders to speak right into his ear. “I can be whole.”

Bucky kisses the sharp corner of Steve’s jaw, just beneath his ear, and Steve arches his back as want pierces him. Bucky tips his head down and rounds his mouth against Steve’s neck. Darts his tongue against Steve’s skin and draws it into a gentle suck. Grazes the skin with an echo of teeth.

The heat inside Steve now is boiling over. He wants to taste Bucky’s mouth and lap away every last scrap of pain and doubt inside him. He wants to scour away the years and decades of pain. Kiss every last inch of Bucky until there’s nowhere left that only Hydra touched. He wants to take his time, lazy and confident and loving in a way they never had a chance to be before, learning all the ways to please Bucky, all the sounds he makes when they aren’t smothered with a pillow or a field kit.

But wanting and needing aren’t the same.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea right now, Buck.” He curls his hands into fists, letting his nails dig into his skin. Jesus, he hates that he has to say this. His entire body rebels against it. But he has to. “Please don’t get me wrong, but maybe we should wait until you’re—”

The fingers around his neck clench down. “Until I’m _what_?” Bucky snarls.

“Until you’re—you know—” Steve lets out a shivering breath. Goosebumps raise on his neck, where Bucky’s mouth was a moment before. “Better.”

“Better. Not broken, you mean.” Bucky laughs cruelly. “I don’t get some fancy scrap of paper certifying that I’m all healed up. I don’t wake up one morning with a different past.”

Steve tenses. “I know—”

“The president can forgive me all he wants. It doesn’t change the fact I did those things.” Suddenly he’s backing Steve against the wall, his face twisted into something feral. His grip tightens around Steve’s throat. “The code words don’t control me, but I still want to throw up every time I hear any of them. I can’t unfire those guns. I’ll never not have been raped. All this bullshit, all this dog and pony show, it doesn’t change a goddamn thing.”

“Bucky . . .” Steve wheezes.

He growls again and pins his knee between Steve’s thighs.

“Bucky.” Steve darts his gaze downward, then back up. “You’re—you’re choking me.”

The furrow in Bucky’s brow softens, and then he sucks in his breath. “Oh, Jesus.” He lets go of Steve’s throat and all but leaps back from him. “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry, Steve, I didn’t mean to—I mean—there’s no excuse—”

A headache screws its way into Steve’s head as blood rushes back to his brain. He rubs at his neck, sure whatever mark Bucky’s left is already fading. It wasn’t about the violence itself, really. Only that Bucky did it without even realizing. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

Bucky swears under his breath. “You’re right.” His shoulders sag. “I’m not ready at all.”

The wounded look on Bucky’s face twists into Steve’s heart. But he can’t just brush over this—it doesn’t do either of them any favors. He takes a deep breath and tries to find a middle path. “I’m not saying I’m opposed to you—to your hands around me, I mean—”

“No, you don’t have to say that—”

“Buck. Stop.” Steve moves toward him, hands raised as if he’s presenting them to a strange dog. “You’re not broken. But we both still have a lot to relearn.”

Bucky bites his lower lip, flushing it with a deep pink, and nods.

Steve tries and fails to pull his eyes away from Bucky’s mouth. “So maybe we could—well, relearn it together.”

“M-maybe so.” Bucky wraps his arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. There’s no excuse.”

“Buck, it’s okay.”

“Sometimes its feels like the only thing I know how to do is hurt people.” He looks away. “It’s been so hard to unlearn.”

“I told you, it’s okay.” Steve reaches for his face, tentative. Asking permission with his eyes. “Just ask first.”

Bucky’s gaze darts toward Steve’s fingers and he gives a tiny nod. With a weak smile, Steve cups his hand around Bucky’s cheek. Bucky’s eyes lid, dark lashes glinting in the light, and his jaw tightens under Steve’s palm. Steve imagines how it would feel to kiss those eyelids again. To hold Bucky against him and soothe away all his fear. But this is good. This is a start. This is so much more than Bucky’s let him do in seventy years, after all.

Steve moves his thumb down to smooth it over Bucky’s lips. Bucky’s trembling under his touch, but he honestly can’t tell if it’s with desire or fear. Steve’s thumb catches at the pillow of Bucky’s lower lip and tugs. Steve moves closer and leans in to kiss at the corner of Bucky’s mouth—

Bucky jerks back and steps out of his reach. Steve’s hand drops back to his side.

Steve suppresses his grimace and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Well—we can take it slow.”

Bucky presses his lips together. Slowly unwinds his arms from around his chest. “I—They’re putting me up in the presidential suite,” he says, after a long pause. “If you—I mean, if you _wanted_ to, you could—maybe you could stay, too.”

Steve bites down on his enthusiastic response. “What would your doctors say?”

Bucky smiles sadly. “That it’s about fucking time already.”

Steve raises one eyebrow.

“They, uh . . . They’re all about me taking chances. Especially second chances.” He looks at Steve with a faint glint in his eye. “Said that if I feel something for someone, I don’t have to bring decades of baggage along for the ride unless I really want to.”

Steve laughs. It’s weak, but it’s genuine, and it feels like a bubble bursting. “Okay. Yeah. I’d like that very much.”

Bucky’s smile deepens. “I’ll tell the guards to let you in whenever you want.”

 

*

 

Steve fumbles his way through a few more strained conversations with politicians and lobbyists back at the reception. Bucky’s bathroom breakdown seems to have given him a second wind, though, and he’s schmoozing and charming his way across both aisles of Congress, his mask of peaceful happiness so firmly in place that only Steve can see the seams. Steve excuses himself for an early night and heads to the presidential suite. Kicks his shoes off, shrugs off his blazer, and loosens his bowtie and cufflinks. Staggers onto the plush couch, soft as a cloud. Thinks about turning the television for about one second before deciding it’s better not to know.

And promptly falls asleep.

He wakes up to a shadow looming over him. He’s halfway leaping up, ready to send his fists swinging, before he remembers where he is and sinks back into the couch cushions. There’s an odd twist on Bucky’s face that Steve can’t quite place, like maybe he’s both amused and a little hurt at the same time. But Steve can’t be sure. He just can’t tell anymore.

“Couldn’t make it to the bedroom?” Bucky asks.

Steve studies his face a moment longer, looking for any hint as to how he should respond. “It’s your room.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Get up.”

Slowly, Steve pulls himself to his feet. Something tightens inside him—an eagerness to do whatever Bucky tells him. He’ll do anything Bucky asks. Anything to bring them together again.

Bucky looks him over, his gaze a slow, aching sweep across Steve’s skin, and a blush spreads on Steve’s face. He misses the way they were before, of course—but he also likes the way they’ve been since. Bucky’s roughness—cruelness, even—and the fierce, determined hunger they’ve both felt. Desperate to reclaim what they once had.

“I want all of you.” Bucky’s voice is husky and thick as smoke. “God, the things I dream of doing to you . . .”

Embers flare to life under Steve’s skin. “M-maybe you should show me.”

Bucky’s smile is a slow, creeping thing, but Steve thinks it might be the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a long time. He walks around Steve in a slow circle, wolfish, then steps up behind him and curls his hands onto Steve’s hips. Steve closes his eyes and leans back into him as Bucky rests his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bucky says, voice low, directly into Steve’s ear. “Not like earlier. But I also think you like some pain.”

A trill shoots down Steve’s spine. “God, yes.”

Bucky catches the tip of Steve’s ear in his teeth and tugs at it before letting go. “You’ll tell me if it’s too much?”

Steve sucks his breath in through his teeth. “Promise.”

“Good.” Bucky rubs a slow circle around Steve’s hips with his thumbs, then slides his fingers under the waistband of Steve’s slacks. He works the buttons fastening Steve’s suspenders in place until they snap free. “Unbutton your shirt.”

Steve slowly works the tuxedo studs free, feeling like there’s an iron band around his chest. He’s seen so many versions of Bucky over the past six months that he has no idea which one he’s going to get. The one who came on to him out of instinct more than anything else? The Bucky driven by anger, hurt, fear? The Bucky who remembered his own abuse, who called Steve everything he’d been called on the video, and yet still cared for him with the same ragged-edged hunger he’d shown so long ago . . .

“That’s enough,” Bucky says, when Steve’s halfway down. “Stop there.”

Steve frowns. “Are you sure—”

Then Bucky shoves the dress shirt down around Steve’s shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. The fabric’s already straining, and it wouldn’t take much for Steve to shred the cotton to bits, but as long as he’s not trying, it pretty effectively holds him in place. Bucky wrenches Steve’s hands back behind him and lashes the suspenders around his wrists.

Steve shivers, giving himself over to Bucky’s assured movements. Whatever Bucky’s planning, Steve wants it. It feels so good to place his trust fully in Bucky like this—feels like finally coming home.

“Gorgeous,” Bucky murmurs. The cold metal of his left hand runs up Steve’s exposed bicep, and then Bucky’s sinking his teeth into the meat of Steve’s neck, right where it meets his shoulder. Steve gasps at the sharp sensation, both painful and deliriously pleasing. Then Bucky steps away, and cold air laps at where his mouth had been. “Stay put.” There’s a rustle of fabric and a heavy clank that sounds like the medal dropping onto the coffee table.

When Bucky’s hands curve around Steve’s waist, his blazer is gone, and his dress shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Steve clenches his jaw as Bucky eases open the fly of Steve’s slacks, then sinks his hand into Steve’s boxer briefs and glides the cold metal down to cup around Steve’s balls.

“Shit,” Steve hisses, head rocking back. “Maybe warm it up next time?”

Bucky thumbs at the head of Steve’s shaft, stirring quickly from his touch. “Doesn’t seem to be much a problem for you.”

Steve flexes his hands. Bound against his back, they’re rather conveniently located for grazing his fingertips against the front of Bucky’s trousers. Bucky growls into Steve’s shoulder in response and grips at Steve’s cock with a click and whir of metal. It feels . . . well, it feels like Steve had hoped, strong and yet careful, the joints smooth and seamless, but it’s still Bucky, steady and so, so confident as he coaxes Steve fully erect.

“Is it worth the wait?” Bucky asks, his voice smoky against Steve’s ear. “Weeks and weeks while I was locked away.” His grip tightens. “Did you even wait for me?”

Steve manages a nod, his mouth too parched for words. “Of course I did.”

Bucky tugs his cock in a sharp jerk, making Steve’s stomach tighten. “I want you all for myself.”

Steve’s eyes flutter closed. “If that’s really what you want . . . I’m yours.”

“You’ve never been just mine, have you?” Bucky’s voice rumbles in his ear. “We always had to hide. I had to share you, during the war. With the army. With your dame.”

Steve bites the inside of his cheek as Bucky’s hand coaxes him closer to the brink. “Well, technically I’m still government property . . . But everything else has changed.”

Bucky’s right hand closes over Steve’s mouth as he hastens his strokes. Steve’s whole body is taut now as he holds himself back. “Then I’ll take whatever I can get,” Bucky says. “I’m used to that.”

Steve stifles a moan. He wants more than that. Wants to be able to shout it to the world. But he remembers Maria’s warning, he remembers the shitstorm around his stupid declaration on News 9; he knows the bits and pieces he’s seen of the news today. A bisexual Steve Rogers is acceptable as an abstract concept, but having a public relationship with the Winter Soldier is something else entirely.

God, he wishes it weren’t.

And then Bucky releases him. Grabs hold of his slacks’ waistband and pulls, fabric seams ripping apart. Once Bucky’s stripped him, he shoves him forward, and without use of his arms to catch his fall, Steve crumples face-first into the gleaming hardwood floor.

“Shit,” Steve mutters. He tries to struggle up to his knees, but he can’t quite maneuver his face and shoulders off of the floor. Which, he suspects, is exactly how Bucky wants it.

“ _Ostavaysya_ ,” Bucky says. _Stay put._ Steve’s body is buzzing at the command. He lets his cheek sink into the cool wood as he turns his head to the side and embraces the chill spreading over his exposed ass.

Then Bucky’s heel is digging into his spine, just between his shoulderblades, and a swirling darkness spreads over Steve’s vision.

“ _Gotov_?” Bucky asks, his shadow looming over Steve. _Ready?_

Steve closes his eyes and nods.

_Crack._

The metal belt buckle strikes Steve’s ass, sharp and cold. Red, stinging pain shoots through Steve, and for a moment, he can almost taste it. It tastes red and metallic; burns like a winter wind raking its nails across his cheeks as he stares down into the ravine. He wants to leap from the train and throw himself down that cliff. Wants the wind to cut him through.

_Crack._

This time the belt burns like pure ethanol in his throat as he chases away countless ghosts. The ghost of the man who’d nestled in his arms only one night before, French wine in their veins and sweat on their bared skin. The ghost in black, smelling of gunpowder and C4, his bloodied hair and mask hiding the scared, wild eyes of the boy he used to be. The ghost on the tape, a cold slab of flesh to be molded and shaped and consumed and discarded again and again.

_Crack._

It’s Steve’s fault, all of it. Steve’s fault Bucky spooks every time he tries to initiate touch. Steve’s fault, every one of those ghosts, every death on Bucky’s conscience, because for all the times in his life he tried to protect Buck, he couldn’t save him when it mattered the most.

_Crack._

But if Steve’s pain can bring any sliver of balance to them, he’ll endure it endlessly.

Bucky bends down and runs his hand over the deep furrows he’s made along Steve’s rump. Steve shivers from his touch, from the blood that slips beneath his fingertips. It’ll scab over and heal within minutes, but at least for now, he’s marked. He vibrates with the delirium of pain, relishes it, craves it. He’ll gladly endure all this and more.

“ _Molodyets_ ,” Bucky murmurs, and pats Steve’s ass.

Then he’s hooking his hand under Steve’s bound arms and dragging him, legs scrabbling beneath him, toward the couch. Bucky settles into the cushions and sprawls Steve over his lap. Bucky’s metal fingers lace through Steve’s hair and he jerks his head back to force Steve’s gaze toward his.

Steve smiles, fuzzy, hazy, and Bucky smirks at him in return. With his right hand, Bucky rubs his thumb against Steve’s lower lip. Steve exhales and flicks his tongue against the tip of Bucky’s thumb.

“Do you want it?” Bucky says, low and gravelly. “Do you want to taste my cock?”

A shiver courses through Steve. “God, yes.” And it’s progress, isn’t it? The last time he tried to go down on Bucky, it spooked him. He’s looking too confident, too commanding now for that.

“No hands,” Bucky says. He begins to unfasten the front of his slacks and lets his erection unfurl, glistening with precome. “Mouth only.”

Steve nods, and darts his tongue across his lips: a promise. His mouth will be more than enough.

Bucky’s grin darkens and he pulls Steve forward across him so Steve’s head rests in his lap, his dick nestled against Steve’s cheek.

With a slow inhale, Steve turns his head and runs his tongue up the long vein on the underside of Bucky’s cock. Bucky groans and tips his head back against the couch, hips rocking forward. Smiling, Steve takes it as an invitation, and laps his tongue around the edge of the head.

“God, I’ve missed that filthy mouth of yours,” Bucky says.

Steve closes his lips over Bucky’s tip in response and licks against the slit. He’s trying to go slow, trying to check each step of the way that Bucky’s okay, but he couldn’t imagine Bucky looking more blissful than he does now. Steve sinks his mouth further down Bucky’s shaft and delights in the way it makes Bucky tense.

“That’s my Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, and trails his metal hand down Steve’s spine. His fingers glide over the scars from his belt, then he works one finger against the top of Steve’s crack. Steve clenches, involuntary, and sucks in around Bucky’s cock. When he draws his mouth up and down slowly on his shaft, Bucky elicits a delicious moan.

Steve tightens as one metal fingertip presses into the smooth muscle of his hole. “Jesus,” he manages, around a mouth full of cock.

Bucky’s stomach moves with a faint laugh beneath him, so Steve hollows out his cheeks and gives him a forceful suck. In answer, Bucky’s finger curls inside of Steve, brushing against his prostate, and Steve goes limp for a moment as stars spin behind his eyes. “That’s more like it,” Bucky purrs. Gently, he works a second metal finger in with the first.

Steve’s practically panting as he tries to keep his focus on Bucky’s dick, but Bucky’s teasing him _just so_. Each time Bucky grunts from the swirl of his tongue, he twitches his fingers inside Steve, and Steve thinks he’s about to burst. He wants to hold onto Bucky. Grip his thighs or cup his face or even flick his fingernail against Bucky’s nipples. But if this is as close as Bucky will let him get, then he’ll take it, he’ll fucking take it.

When Bucky’s worked him open with three fingers and his vision’s starting to blur from the teasing, Bucky withdraws his hand. He scoops Steve up, mouth trailing spit across Bucky’s dick, and turns him around to face Bucky. With Steve’s legs locked around Bucky’s waist, Bucky carries them toward the four-poster presidential bed.

Whatever Bucky says in Russian then, Steve can’t decipher, but he doesn’t need to. Bucky lays down on his back with Steve atop him and, with a steady grip on Steve’s hips, settles him painstakingly, slowly down onto his erection, already slick with Steve’s spit. Steve shudders at the friction inside him, sending sparks of pain and pleasure both up through him, and pressing into him just right. Steve plants his thighs to either side of Bucky’s hips, and starts to rock, up and down.

Bucky isn’t looking him in the eye. His gaze is straight up, toward the bed’s canopy, but the strain on his face, his furious grunts, more than make up for it. Steve savors the way his bound hands let him focus purely on his movements, on the feeling of Bucky inside him, and on the pressure swelling and swelling within him with each frantic bounce.

Bucky clenches his hands on Steve’s hips and thrusts into him, forceful, locking him in place. With a startled cry, Steve lets go of his control, and spills right onto Bucky’s dress shirt. Bucky growls deep inside his throat and rolls his head back into the pillows as he comes. Steve’s gasping for air, sliding forward, sinking onto Bucky’s chest. Trying to cling to the moment and not lose himself in all-consuming bliss.

Bucky’s fingers unfurl from Steve’s hips and he goes limp beneath Steve. For a few moments, they both struggle to catch their breath, to come back to themselves. With a smile, Steve kisses Bucky’s jaw. Bucky’s eyes are dark, so much darker than Steve remembers, and he’s still not looking down, so Steve kisses his cheek, his eyelashes brushing against Bucky’s nose. “I love you,” Steve murmurs, before he can stop himself.

Bucky closes his eyes.

“I—I’m sorry.” Steve swallows. “I just wanted—That was great,” he says in rush. “That was incredible.”

Bucky turns his head away from Steve and breathes slowly a few times. Steve watches the way his chest moves; listens to the subtle whir of his arm. “I need to wash up,” he says finally.

Bucky extricates himself from Steve and undoes the suspenders and Steve’s shirt to let him free. Steve’s arms fall forward, and he rubs absently at his wrists as he watches Bucky retreat into the bathroom. _Shit._

Letting Bucky be in control—it felt like forgiveness, in a way. But he isn’t sure how long he can deal with their uneven approach. He needs Bucky’s intimacy—that thing they’d craved for so long back before, and had to suppress. Now they’re free to have it, and yet it seems to hurt Bucky.

He doesn’t want to hurt Bucky.

He doesn’t want to be nothing but someone for Bucky to fuck, either.

Steve wants to kiss him, hold him against him, run his hands through Bucky’s newly shortened hair and taste his lips. They hadn’t so much as brushed their mouths together all night. Bucky seemed like he wanted it too, from the way he’d been interrogating Steve, but the actual act still sent him running.

Time—maybe that’s all they need. They need time to heal, to relearn each other’s hearts as well as they’d been relearning each other’s bodies. But, god, it hurts. Steve feels like he’s waited plenty long as it is.

Bucky slinks back into the bedroom, stripped down to his boxer briefs now, and sits on the edge of the bed with his back to Steve. Steve rolls toward him but waits. Patient as he knows how to be. He’d let Bucky take the lead in sex; he can let Bucky lead now, too.

“I don’t want to be your secret ever again,” Bucky says.

Steve props himself up on one elbow. “Of course not. We’re past that. We can be as open as you want about what we are.”

“That’s the thing.” Bucky runs his left hand over his face with a sigh. “I don’t know what I want. I mean—deep down, I know. I want you to be mine, all mine, and I can’t hardly breathe with how bad I want it. But when it actually looks like I have that, it . . .”

Steve holds his breath as he waits for Bucky to gather his thoughts.

“It hurts.”

Steve closes his eyes.

“I’m not broken. I—I don’t want to be broken anymore.” Bucky clenches a fist. “But I keep finding all these tiny fractures and they refuse to heal up.”

“Come home with me,” Steve whispers.

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t see how that can help anything.”

“I’ll give you all the time and space you need.”

Bucky’s shoulders droop. Slowly, he dips over onto his side and curls up on the far side of the mattress from Steve.

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbles.

Steve rolls onto his back and stares up at the opulent fabric of the bed’s canopy. All the extravagance around them. Such a far cry from the cramped one-room flat where they began, from the pup tents ripe with unwashed bodies where they tried to stake their claims. They could shout their love across the airwaves, if they wanted. Declare it in front of the whole world.

But it doesn’t mean anything if Bucky doesn’t want it. It doesn’t mean anything if Steve can’t stop finding all these fracture lines in Bucky’s soul, pressing up against them until they splinter more.

He wishes they didn’t splinter inside him, too.

 


	5. i.

**i.**

“Wow,” Natasha says, both eyebrows raised as Steve enters the main lounge of Avengers Tower. “Looks like someone had fun last night.”

“Wha—?” Steve’s hand darts instinctively to his backside before he stops himself. “I’m not—I don’t—”

“Bruises on your throat.” Clint slurps at the remains of his iced coffee. “Must’ve been one hell of a grip strength to bruise Captain America, huh, Nat?”

“Yeah, can’t imagine who that could be,” Nat says, with a tone that’s the oral equivalent of an eyeroll.

Clint slugs Steve on the arm. “Good for you, Cap. Havin’ a healthy sex life and stuff.”

Steve flushes with shame. “Yeah. Uh, thanks.”

He hurries down the hall, frustration welling up in his chest. They’re right, but not in the way they think. When Bucky put his hand around Steve’s throat, it wasn’t at all what they’re imagining—it was nothing but Bucky’s own frustration and rage. Bucky had barely realized he’d done it at all.

But that’s recovery. Isn’t it? Learning what set him off and working his way past it. Steve just has to be patient. He has to be accepting. So goddamned accepting. He has to sit on his hands and let Bucky sort himself out while the acid of Steve’s own guilt eats and eats and eats at him until he feels like there’s nothing left.

He locks himself in his suite and dismisses JARVIS’s plea to check the onslaught of messages that poured in while he was in DC. Once he gets the water running in his shower, steam filling up the bathroom, he strips down and stares at himself in the mirror. The bruises are definitely faded, but they’re still there, faint shadows circling his throat in bands. He twists around to look at his backside and swallows hard as he spots the mottled welts on his ass. He touches one and winces at the sting from it.

Healing. This is how Bucky needs to heal. Isn’t it? God, but it was unsettling to think that even after a month of rehabilitation, Bucky could find himself choking Steve and not even realize he was doing it. Steve sighs and leans against the counter. And after however many goddamned years on this planet, of pining for Bucky, Steve’s first instinct had still been to minimize it, to brush it away so he could go back to being happy and in love again.

Bucky had said that HYDRA made him hate Steve. They made him blame Steve for everything that had gone wrong in his life, had twisted his thoughts around until he wanted nothing to serve his real captors. Maybe there are thought patterns they put in him that can’t be dug out, no matter how much therapy he endures. Maybe there are some that shouldn’t be.

Because Steve deserves it. He does. It’s his fault, everything’s his fault—that awful chorus narrates his every step. His fault for being too weak, his fault Bucky had to go off to war alone. His fault he couldn’t stop Bucky from getting captured in the first place. His fault he lost Bucky that day—just one day after telling him that maybe they could make a happily ever after of their own.

Steve steps into the shower and lets it scald his skin, shred him apart. He couldn’t save Bucky, and for that, he’s responsible for everything Bucky’s become. Bucky thinks Hydra made a monster of him, but Steve’s the monster who let it happen. If Bucky can’t control himself, if he can’t bear to let Steve show him even an ounce of tenderness—then it’s the very least that Steve deserves.

The water burns at the welts as Steve turns and he clenches his jaw with a groan. Then he plants himself in place there, and lets it burn and burn.

 

*

 

An incident in Dar-es-Salaam turns out to be a non-incident, and the Avengers are back on the quinjet not an hour after they arrived, everyone suited up and full of restless energy in need of release. Sam’s strapped in next to Steve in the passenger hold, and as Steve bounces one knee, Sam places his hand on Steve’s knee to still him.

“You okay there, Cap?”

Natasha’s gaze flicks up from across from them, but she continues to act like she’s playing with her phone. Steve lowers his head so he doesn’t have to look at either of them.

“Just need to burn off some energy, I guess.” Steve shrugs. “I was all set for a fight.”

“I’m gonna go for a jog in Central Park when we get back if you want to join,” Sam says.

Steve presses his lips together. He should. He really should. But he wants to be alone with his thoughts, with this guilt he feels like he’s trying to outrun. “That’s okay. I’ve got other things I should be doing.”

Sam nods slowly. “Sure thing, man. Maybe next time.”

“Yeah.” Steve swallows. “Next time.”

When he glances back up at Natasha, she’s staring at her phone and shaking her head.

 

*

 

Maria’s the one who tells him.

“Barnes is going to be released next week,” she says, her whole body rigid, curled around her tablet as she watches Steve. “Aside from medication and therapy sessions twice a week, he’s a free man.”

Steve stares at her for a minute, hearing the words, but unsure how to connect them together. When he’d dreamed of Bucky coming home, he imagined wrapping him up in his arms and kissing his cheek and never letting go. He imagined—what? Bucky moving into his suite in Avengers Tower? Coming to work for the Avengers Initiative? Like they were just the Howling Commandos all over again, and everything would go back to the way it was?

Yes. That had been exactly what he’d imagined. Because for all the guilt weighing down on him, he was still capable of stupid, foolish amounts of hope.

“So,” Steve asks carefully, “what happens next?”

Maria blinks. “I guess that’s up to Sergeant Barnes, isn’t it?” When Steve stares back at her, she continues. “I—I mean, he’s free to pursue gainful employment, housing, whatever will give him purpose. He’s been given a modest grant from the POW-MIA charity to help him get on his feet, so it’s not like we’re kicking him out on the street, but I think SHIELD has been very generous in managing his treatment program, his public relations, transportation . . .”

“Oh, yes,” Steve says, unable to hide the bite in his tone. “So very generous.”

Maria sighs. “Look, Cap, I know how much he means to you. And we’ve— _I’ve—_ done everything in my power to get him the help he needed. To make him safe for the world, and the world safe for him. But ultimately . . . there’s just too much stigma there still. He’s safe, but he’s just not someone people can look up to as an Avenger. Surely you understand that.”

Steve grits his teeth, wishing he could feel them crack. “I think I understand perfectly.”

Maria winces. “Steve, come on.” She lowers her voice. “I want you both to be happy. But while people can forgive him for everything he’s done, more or less, they can never . . . you know.”

Steve takes a step toward her. “Never _what_?”

“Well.” She swallows. “Look up to him. The way they look up to you, or Thor, or Tony—”

“Oh, right, I forgot.” Steve laughs bitterly. “Because Tony’s such a perfect role model for us all to aspire toward.”

Maria exhales, eyes casting downward, her body folding inward. “I’m not doing this to be difficult.”

Steve shakes his head.

“It’s for your safety. And Barnes’s. And—and everyone’s. Okay? Can you please trust me on that? That I have everyone’s best interest at heart?”

“Yeah.” Steve shrugs with one shoulder. “I guess I can.”

“We’re trying to make life safe for him. And for you. But you don’t exactly make it easy, Cap.” She smiles sadly. “And I guess you never have.”

The worst part is, Steve thinks, the Bucky he used to know would agree with her.

 

*

 

“Now, I probably shouldn’t even be showing you this loft, it isn’t officially on the market yet, but given your price range and your must-haves, it’s just too perfect not to pass up . . .”

Steve shoves his hands into his jacket pockets as he follows the realtor into yet another Brooklyn condo. Open floor plans, exposed brick, subway tiles, reclaimed hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances, big spacious windows with a view of Long Island or the East River or Brighton Beach—Steve’s practically reciting listings in his sleep now. It all seems so excessive. But it isn’t for him—not for him alone, anyway. He wants Bucky to feel safe. Wants him to never feel like he doesn’t have a home, not ever again.

God, he’s being ridiculous. It’s too much—it’s not that Steve minds giving it, but that he knows that Bucky would never take it from him. Steve takes one step into the condo, sees the Brooklyn Bridge twinkling at him in full view from the bank of airy windows, and shakes his head.

“I think I need something more . . . modest.”

The realtor stares at him for a moment. “I, um—with all due respect, Captain Rogers, the line of credit you’ve been pre-approved for is more than enough to cover—”

“Don’t care.” Steve heads for the door. “Just need a little more privacy, is all.”

She nods and trots after him. “Let me see what I can do.”

 

*

 

It feels like setting the stage for a surprise party, only there isn’t supposed to be any surprise at all. Still, Steve is pacing the floor like a panther, wearing down the already-thin varnish on the old pre-war wood floors, the “modest” (for Brooklyn) rowhouse squeezing in around him like an asthma attack. They’re bringing Bucky straight here, and while Steve gave them suggestions on how to explain, he has no idea if Hill or Coulson or whoever’s in charge of this whole mess now will actually tell Bucky what they’re supposed to.

 _It’s nothing, really,_ Steve practices. _Just a little something to help you start out. No strings. No—_

God. As if Bucky could see it as anything other than another set of chains.

He doesn’t want that Bucky back—the one who looked at him like just another obstacle, just another faceless someone waiting for a chance to use him up. It’s a gift, not a leash. He just hopes Bucky can see it that way.

There’s a knock at the door, faint, two quick taps.

Steve’s heart leaps into his throat and he runs his hands down the front of his t-shirt to straighten it out. Okay. He can do this. It’s just the first time he’s seen Bucky with nothing on the horizon for them, no future mapped out, just a big gaping question mark that Steve’s terrified Bucky will turn into a goodbye—

He opens the door.

Bucky’s wearing dark skinny jeans and a black t-shirt; his gaze is cast down, like he’s not ready to look at Steve. He’s holding a single duffel bag with both hands, shoulders curled forward like he wants to fold into himself. A far cry from the confident mask he’d managed to wear for most of the day last time Steve saw him.

“Hey,” Steve tries, but it comes out raspy.

Bucky nods, gaze just barely skimming over Steve’s. “Okay if I come in?”

“Of course.” Steve steps back to give him plenty of space in the foyer. “It’s your place.”

Bucky winces at that, but steps inside.

His hair’s still short from the medal ceremony, but wavy, the way it always got when it was just starting to grow out. With a pang, Steve remembers how much he loved to tease Bucky about that, about the way it would curl around his ears and drape down his forehead like some radio crooner. Steve would brush his fingers through it and kiss Bucky’s forehead, the bridge of his nose, his lips. He’d take any excuse he could to touch Bucky, to kiss him.

Now he keeps his hands wedged in his jean pockets.

“It’s nice,” Bucky says. He doesn’t ease his grip on the duffel bag handles. “Way too expensive.”

“Yeah, well, everything in Brooklyn is these days.” Steve manages a strained smile. “Even an ice cream’s, like, seven bucks.” Bucky huffs—it kinda sorta sounds like a laugh, so Steve goes with it. “Artisanal hand-churned, with antibiotic-free dairy and wasabi pea dust and rainbow sprinkles.”

“Big Gay Ice Cream?” Bucky asks, and huffs again. “Walked past it in the East Village a few times.”

“Yeah. That’s the one.” Steve’s smile settles a little more easily. He leans against the foyer wall and steadies himself. “You know, I can take your bag, if you want, and . . .”

Bucky’s arm whirs as he clenches the handles tighter. “I, uh . . . Maybe you could explain to me what this is all about, first.”

Steve crinkles his forehead. “I thought they told you. They were supposed to explain—”

“I know, but I—”

“And, I mean, since you didn’t bother to reach out to me at all—”

Bucky’s eyes tighten into a glower, and Steve feels it like a blade into his side. Fuck. He couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut. But now that he’s let the first bit of anger trickle through, he wants to open the floodgates.

“Okay, Steve, let’s get something straight right now.” Bucky’s speaking quietly—so quietly—but his tone is sharp enough it stings. “You don’t owe me a goddamn thing. Not a place to live, not your company, not a fucking thing, all right?”

“I—I know that,” Steve snaps, but even as he says it, he wonders if it’s really true.

“I don’t need your fucking blood money or whatever the hell this is for you. Buying your way out of your guilt. Whatever.”

Steve groans. “Bucky, come on—”

“And I don’t owe you shit, either. This isn’t—You’re not keeping me here. Like some pet.”

“No. God, no.” Steve closes his eyes, trying to tamp the anger back down. “This is yours. Free and clear. Believe me, between Stark Industries and all my military back pay and—and my point is, I just—” He sighs and drops his hands to his sides. “I just want you to be happy. Whatever that might possibly mean for you.”

Bucky drops the duffel bag and shakes his head. “Well, maybe that’s not up to you.”

“Bucky—”

“Can you live with that?” Bucky asks. “With not feeling responsible for me, for my wellbeing?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“Because it kinda feels like that’s what this is. Like you want some kind of absolution. Which is just . . .” He sighs and turns his head away, his jaw tight. “You’ve got nothing you need forgiveness for.”

Steve’s fingers twitch, and it’s all he can do not to reach for Bucky’s hand. His face. Anything to ground him, to feel connected to Bucky once more. The anger whispers, _That’s a lie._ The anger tells him, _He’ll never forgive you._

And Steve can never forgive himself.

“Anyway.” Bucky hoists his bag up onto one shoulder. “Where’s my room?”

Steve springs up from the wall. _Don’t get your hopes up don’t get your hopes up_ but he’ll take anything that’ll drown out his anger, his doubt. “Up to you. I can show you the options—”

“Yeah? And what, you’ll take the other one?” Bucky asks.

Steve bites at his lower lip. “Only—if you want me to. This is your place.” The words lodge in his throat. “Not mine.”

Bucky nods like he still isn’t convinced.

After Steve gives him a brief tour of the rowhouse, Bucky settles on exactly the room Steve thought he might—third floor, gabled, the only window high up and rounded, and partially shaded by the gently rustling leaves of the maple outside. It isn’t big, but it’s still more spacious than the one-room in the tenement building they shared back before the war. Bucky nods, after a pause, when Steve offers to fix dinner for them both, and Steve hurries back downstairs before Bucky has a chance to change his mind.

“Tell me one thing,” Bucky says over dinner—practically the first thing he’s said beyond the typical platitudes. He’s shoving roasted rosemary potatoes around his plate, and for a minute, Steve is so startled that he doesn’t realize what Bucky’s said.

But then suddenly he’s thrown back in time, leaning over a wooden table across from Bucky, his hair slick with pomade and his smile so bright it could rival the glow of Manhattan across the river. _Tell me one thing_ , they would say. _One thing about your day, good or bad._ Sometimes Steve would brag about a sketch he’d just finished, or a great deal he got down at the corner store. And Bucky might gripe about getting stiffed on his pay, or the girl who asked him to take her dancing (which always gave them both a good laugh), or the new novel he picked up from the five and dime.

Sometimes, though, the only thing Steve could think was _I got to sit across the table from this gorgeous guy._ Sometimes he’d say _Falling asleep in your arms._ And then Bucky would roll his eyes or turn bright red or set down his fork and knife. _Best thing about my day,_ Bucky would say, _was tasting you, your skin, your mouth,_ and Steve would blush and say _That hasn’t happened yet,_ and Bucky would raise one eyebrow and say _Then what’re we waiting for?_

Somehow Steve’s pretty sure that’s not the answer Bucky wants to hear right now. He sets his fork down and leans back in his chair, regarding Bucky. “Maybe you should go first.”

“Okay.” Bucky stops shoving the potatoes around and stares down at his lap. “Okay. Best thing. It was packing up my clothes, I guess.”

Steve’s pulse quickens. “Because you knew you were coming—” _Home._

But Bucky shakes his head. “It was . . . realizing that everything I owned now, I’d picked it out. They’re sneaky like that, the therapists.” He manages a crooked grin. “The shampoo I chose because I liked the way it smelled. Jeans that fit me, that I liked the color and cut. And yeah, it all fit into a little duffel bag. But it’s all mine. You know?”

Steve swallows down the lump in his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Bucky’s shoulders draw up toward his ears. “Your turn.”

 _You_ , Steve thinks. _Seeing you. Being near you._ He wets his lips. “Well, I didn’t burn the roast,” he says, grinning, “so that’s definitely a good thing.”

Bucky laughs softly. “I don’t think the burned meat smell ever came out of the couch.”

“Or my clothes . . . or my hair . . .”

After a few weak laughs, they fall quiet again, and Steve finishes off his serving of the roast and watches Bucky shove food around the plate some more. When Bucky looks up again, though, all the glow is gone from his face.

“So, um . . . I’m supposed to apologize to you.”

Steve winces. “Supposed to?”

“I mean—I want to. Really. I just, uh . . . needed help understanding just what it is I want to apologize for.”

“Oh.” Steve squeezes his hands together, underneath the table. “Okay.”

“I’ve, um . . . I haven’t been good to you, ever since . . . You know. To say the least.” Bucky stares up at the ceiling, eyes glinting, and the ache of that sight swallows Steve up. “There’s no excusing it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. After everything you’ve been through—”

“No.” Bucky’s left hand tightens where it rests on the table with a faint click of joints. “It isn’t okay, and if you’d let me—”

“But you don’t owe me an apology for anything—I’m the one who should be—”

“Would you shut up and let me talk for a goddamn minute?” Bucky snaps.

Steve clamps his mouth shut. God, he’s terrible at this. It burns like acid in his throat, how desperately he wants to do everything right, and how awfully he’s actually doing it.

Bucky’s nostrils are flaring, but slowly, he takes a deep breath and nods. “Here’s the thing,” he says, almost under his breath. “About the serum.”

Steve furrows his brow.

“It doesn’t change who you are. It just . . . makes you more of it. And yeah, some of these things I’ve done, they’re me reacting to the bad things I’ve been through. They were caused by circumstance. I’ve got these . . . instincts . . .” He closes his eyes, and his lower lip shakes, and he looks frail, so frail, though it’s Steve who feels like he’s shattering. “And I can’t make them go away, and maybe on some level, I don’t want them to go away. If I didn’t have a survival instinct, a fighting instinct, then I—I would’ve killed myself months ago.”

“Bucky,” Steve whispers.

Bucky holds up one hand to quiet Steve and looks away. “But mostly, the person I am now—it’s just an amplification of who I was. And I was always petty about you. You see that, don’t you?” He shakes his head. “I was always jealous. Possessive. You have no idea how it burned me up when I first learned about you and Carter—And when those Army pricks looked at you like you were their property, and I guess you were, but I just wanted you to be all mine.”

Steve’s voice crumbles as he tries to speak. “I was always yours. Even when you pushed me away.”

“—I’d always seen in you what they only now were seeing, you know? It made me so angry. And then I had this thing inside me, and it didn’t make me stop feeling like myself, it just made it feel like there was more of me, right? And all that anger and everything—I just wanted to hurt. I wanted to _be_ hurt.”

Steve remembers his mouth on Bucky’s, his hand on Bucky’s throat. He remembers cold white tiles and how warm Bucky felt when he was inside of him. The more reckless Bucky got, the more Steve loved it. He loved to hear Bucky beg, to see Bucky twisting and hungry and eager for any chance they could find to steal away.

Most of all, he loved dreaming that someday, it wouldn’t have to end.

“And then, when they got ahold of me again . . .”

Bucky’s words choke off and he covers his face with the metal hand. The chair scrapes against the floor as Steve stands, but Bucky waves him away with his right hand, and with a sigh, Steve sits back down.

“All they did was sharpen the edge on everything I was. I got hurt plenty—just like I wanted—” He laughs, bitter. “But hurting others? That’s what they wanted the most from me. It was already there, I already knew it from every time I pulled you out of a fight and wanted to make sure whoever had been kicking your ass knew never to try it again. I already knew from the incredible— _relief_ I felt every time I fired my rifle and watched one of them die. All they had to do was make me willing to hurt everyone. Even people I loved. Especially people I loved.”

Steve opens his mouth to apologize, but it lodges in his throat. It isn’t what Bucky needs or wants.

“The doctors said—they said it might never go away, that urge. When the first tool you reach for when coping with anything is violence, it’s hard to train yourself to reach for anything else. I’m trying. I’m really trying. And I guess I did good enough that they think I can at least be trusted to be by myself. But it’s always gonna be there, Steve. I can shrink it down, but it won’t go away.”

“I understand,” Steve says.

Bucky lowers his hand and looks at Steve with a gaze like an open wound. “You say that. But you don’t.”

Steve swallows. He can’t forget the jolt of fear and adrenaline when Bucky turned on him in the Hay-Adams bathroom. It wasn’t playful, it wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t anything except instinct. He forgave him, but that doesn’t mean it’s any way he wants to live. Always waiting for the next thing that’ll make Bucky turn like that.

“I know you want me to be your sweetheart. You want us to be like we were, only out in the open now, some big sappy love story that transcends time and all that shit.” Bucky shakes his head. “And goddamn, there’s a big part of me that wants that, too.”

This time, there’s no flutter of hope in Steve’s chest. There’s only the weight of whatever “but” is coming next, crushing down on him.

“But I dunno if I can be that. If I’m physically capable of it.”

“Bucky—”

“You deserve someone who can kiss you, hold you, be soft and gentle with you. Someone who doesn’t shut down the minute you show any kindness.”

Steve’s eyes are burning; he blinks to try to hold it back. “But I don’t want just anyone.”

“Goddammit, Steve. _I_ want that for you. Even though it’ll never come from me.”

“But you’re wrong.” Steve stands again and moves to the side of the table. Bucky shrinks back from him, but he doesn’t move any closer. “I know it’s in you. Maybe it takes time to unlearn, but I know it’s there.” He raises his hand, about a foot from Bucky’s face. “If—if you’d let me show you—”

Bucky stares at Steve’s hand like it’s a loaded gun but, lower lip clenched in his teeth, he nods.

Steve steps forward and runs his fingers along the side of Bucky’s face. His skin’s soft, smooth like it never was before, and all Steve wants is to press his lips to it and live in that soft place. But Bucky’s trembling uncontrollably, and the way his face is screwed up, Steve figures he might as well be petting him with razor blades.

Steve lets his hand fall away.

“Th-there’s two ways this night is gonna go,” Bucky says, after a long pause.

Steve folds his arms and waits.

“Either I’m gonna ask you to stay, because the thought of another night without you close, after months away from you, sounds too awful to bear. But then I’m inevitably going to do something stupid, or you are, or maybe both of us, and it’s going to end with me fucking you. With me _hurting_ you, because it’s the only way I know how to deal with this fucking mess of want and need and hormones and muscle memory and murderous instincts and all the fragments of what I remember we used to be.”

Steve’s stomach turns, but he forces himself to smile. “Is that your description of it, or the doctors’?”

“Little bit of both.” Bucky smiles back, slick as thin ice. “Or—or the other way this can go—is you can go home. Go back to the tower, or wherever it is you live these days. And then maybe tomorrow you can help me start looking for a job.”

Steve’s not going to sleep, and he knows it—and he imagines for Bucky it’ll be much the same. But he’s right about one thing. Anything Bucky wants from him, wants to do to him, he’d let him. Because it’s so much less than he deserves, for everything he’s let happen to Bucky when he couldn’t be strong enough.

But it isn’t what either of them needs.

Steve picks up his plate and scrapes his leftovers into the compost bin—another thing he’ll have to teach Bucky about—before sticking it in the dishwasher. “I love you, Buck.” He keeps his back to Bucky and leans against the sink. If he looks at him, then he’ll never be able to make himself leave. “I’m glad you’re . . . home.”

“Yeah.” Bucky’s voice is so faint even Steve can barely hear it. “I am too.”

“There’s, um, leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry later.” Steve heads toward the foyer and pulls his jacket off the hook. “Hit the ‘Stay’ button on the alarm system when you go to bed, then hit it again in the morning to turn it off.”

Bucky hovers in the doorway to the foyer with his arms folded and his expression blank. Steve watches him for a moment, like he’s looking for an excuse to stay. Any sign that Bucky actually wants him to, rather than Bucky just being too afraid to be alone.

He doesn’t find it.

“Thank you, Steve,” Bucky says at last. “For—for everything.”

Steve yanks the front door open. “Least I could do.”

He manages to make it all the way back to the tower before he unravels, before he breaks down into nothing at all.

 

*

 

He accompanies Bucky to his therapy appointments and sits in the waiting room, leafing through old issues of _Psychology Today_ and _The Economist_ while the white noise machine drowns out the conversation in the next room. Three sessions a week in midtown Manhattan—it’s better than all day, every day, Steve supposes.

(“You ever think about talking to someone yourself?” the therapist asks Steve once, while Bucky’s in the restroom.

“Oh, no, ma’am, I’m too boring for that,” he tells her, but she just raises her eyebrows and looks away.)

They start with jogging first, then, when Natasha and Sam promise to come with them, visit a yoga studio down the street full of Park Slope mommies, bearded men with undercuts, and one ancient man who swears he saw Steve and Bucky at his family’s club in Harlem back in the 1940s, even though neither of them recognize the club’s name. (“Maybe you were too busy gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes,” Natasha says, draping herself across both of their shoulders before she notices the way it makes Bucky tense up and she retreats.) When one of the women complains about the noise from Bucky’s arm disrupting her meditation, the instructor comps them ten free classes and politely suggests that maybe they’d prefer he teach them in private group sessions at the gym in Avengers Tower, and Steve hurriedly says yes before Bucky has a chance to protest.

“So,” Sam says over their late breakfast of avocado toast at the café next to the studio, “I’m supposed to head down to Atlantic City with some buddies from my unit next weekend.”

“Any cute ones?” Natasha asks.

Sam raises one eyebrow as Bucky coughs into his napkin. “For me or for you?”

She shrugs. “I’m not picky.”

“Well, that’s a damn lie,” Steve says under his breath, which starts Bucky coughing again.

“Well, I was going to _ask_ ,” Sam continues, looking back toward Steve and Bucky, “if you might want to tag along. Got an extra room in our block. Sunshine might do you some good.”

“Just the one room, though?” Natasha asks.

Steve can feel his face turning brilliant red. “I’m, uh . . . I don’t know . . .”

“I think what Sam is asking,” Natasha says, leaning on Sam’s shoulder, “is whether you two are sleeping together.”

“Natasha!” Sam hisses.

“Oh, come on. Like you were being so subtle.” She fixes her gaze squarely on Steve. “I mean, you’re paying how much for a brownstone over here, yet every night I hear you banging around in the kitchen, or pounding the treadmill . . .”

“Drop it,” Sam says, his voice much lower now.

“I mean, if you’re not interested,” Natasha continues, “I’ll take the damn room. I could stand to work on my tan.”

“Maybe we could, uh . . . get back to you on that,” Bucky says.

Natasha shares a look with Sam, her face practically gleaming. “About the room, or whether you’re sleeping together? Ow,” she adds, as Sam kicks her under the table. And then they’re caught up in a kicking and slugging fight, much to Steve’s great relief.

As he looks at Bucky, though, he suspects he meant a bit of both.

 

*

 

Then they stumble into the brownstone’s front door and Steve’s barely had time to drop his yoga mat before Bucky is pressing him against the foyer wall.

“Jesus,” Steve says, or tries to, but Bucky clamps his hand over Steve’s mouth as he rocks their hips together. He’s pinned in place with metal and flesh and heat, so much heat. They’re both in loose sweatpants, and there’s no way Bucky can’t feel Steve’s swiftly growing cock as he sinks his teeth into Steve’s bare shoulder. Steve moans, back arching, a dark fire feeling like it’s going to burn a hole right through him. Bucky’s teeth, on his chest, on his nipple, on his stomach, mouthing at the waistband of his sweatpants—his every sense focuses on the feel of it, and he burns and burns.

But he wants to taste that mouth, too. He wants to wrap his arms around Bucky and feel him, so solid, so alive, against his chest. Because if he lets go, he’s not sure he’ll ever feel it again.

Steve reaches for Bucky’s arm and pulls him back up from where he’s teething at the waistband of Steve’s pants. Steve leans forward, straining to free his mouth from Bucky’s hand so he can kiss him. But Bucky only glares at him and tightens his grip around Steve’s mouth. They stare at one another, the heat tying itself in knots in Steve’s stomach. His cock’s throbbing, sure—he’s aching for Bucky—but what he truly wants, what he’s truly yearning for, is to feel Bucky’s body against him. In his arms. No sex, no lust, just closeness.

In the cold blue of Bucky’s eyes, he sees nothing of the sort.

After a long moment, Bucky pulls Steve away from the wall and steers him, one hand to the back of his neck, toward the living room. He pushes Steve over the back of the couch and smashes his face into the soft cushions. The motion is mechanical and efficient, as empty as the look in Bucky’s eyes.

“Wait,” Steve says, muffled, as Bucky slots his knee between Steve’s thighs. Bucky’s shoving Steve’s sweatpants down over the curve of his ass and pressing his erection against its cleft, sharp and probing. “Buck, wait.”

Bucky snorts and squeezes at Steve’s ass with the metal arm, the cold and crease of joints stinging. “You seem plenty ready.”

Steve swallows. “It’s not that—just—”

Bucky digs the head of his cock against the back of Steve’s thigh with a growl. “Then _what_?”

Steve closes his eyes, sparks swirling behind his vision. It isn’t important. It doesn’t matter. He’d let Bucky do anything to him—wants him to. Just a dab of lube and he’d let Bucky fuck him all day long. He has no way to deny Bucky that.

But what Steve _wants_ —

He wants more.

“C’mere,” Steve murmurs. “At least let me see your face.”

Bucky bites at the back of Steve’s shoulder, then swirls his tongue over the teeth marks, sending a fresh shiver down Steve’s spine. “You know what I look like.”

Steve’s limbs loosen. “That’s not the point. I just—want to see you.”

Bucky growls again and tightens his grip on Steve—left hand on his ass, right hand on the back of his neck. “Stop it.”

But now that Steve’s said it, the ache is building and building inside of him. He wants— _needs_ —to see Bucky. The loneliness is shredding him up, even worse when Bucky’s this close. “Please. Let me look in your eyes.” Steve braces himself, like he’s expecting a blow. “I want to kiss you. I want to touch you, too.”

Bucky goes very still, and Steve fists at the couch cushions, each moment twisting the screw tighter and tighter in his belly. “I told you,” Bucky says at last. “I can’t give you that.”

Steve’s knees soften and he sags forward.

“I—I can’t be your sweetheart.” Bucky releases him and steps away. “I can’t. I—I’m not—”

“I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” Steve shoves himself up from the couch. “You’re safe here. You’re safe.”

“No.” Bucky’s tone turns ragged. “I’m not.”

Steve finds his footing and stands up. As he turns, he yanks his sweatpants back up, then adjusts his erection to rest flush against his stomach, held in place by the waistband. “I don’t know how else to prove it to you, Buck. You’re safe.”

“What’s the matter?” Bucky snaps. “Don’t want me to fuck you without kissing you, worshiping you?” He shakes his head, lip curled back in a sneer. “Sure hasn’t stopped you before.”

Steve narrows his eyes. “Well, maybe I’m tired of it. Maybe I’m tired of trying to atone.”

And the moment Steve says it, all the dark ache nestled in his stomach lifts away.

“That’s all it is, huh?” Bucky asks. “You don’t want—any of this. You just want me to let you off the fucking hook, no matter what it takes.” He covers his face with one hand and turns away. “Jesus, Steve, I fucking knew it—”

“Wait—that’s not it, either.”

“No? Then why else are you letting me treat you like such shit?” Bucky shouts. “If this isn’t what you want, not really—then why the _fuck_ do you let me? Why else would you, if you didn’t think you deserve some kind of punishment?”

“I—I do want this. I want _you_.” Steve bites the inside of his cheek. “But either you trust me, or you don’t. I can’t control that for you.”

Bucky shakes his head, over and over, hunching over onto himself. Steve takes a careful step toward him, arm already raised to pull him into a comforting embrace. But he stops and lets his hand drop.

“Where is it that you go, Buck?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky blinks and stares up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. “I told you. I just . . . leave.”

“Right.” Steve nods, taking a deep breath. “Okay. I know that’s what got you through seventy years of hell. I get that.” He folds his arms. “But I’m not here for your shell. I’m here for _you_.”

“You don’t mean that,” Bucky mutters.

“I do.” Steve lets out his breath. He feels—so light. Like every word is another plate lifted off the barbell, the one he didn’t even know he was hauling around. “When you’re ready to share that with me—if you ever want to share that with me—then I’m right here. But I’m . . .”

Steve blinks, trying to clear his vision.

“I can’t do this.” Steve’s voice shatters. “I love you too much.”

When Bucky turns back toward him, it’s with a stare that might as well be cut from stone. “If that’s what you want,” he says, his tone completely flat.

Steve shakes his head, scoops his mat back up from the foyer, and heads out the door.

 

*

 

By about the third time Natasha invites Steve out and one of her single friends just so “happens” to tag along, Steve’s ready to lock himself in his suite and not come out for anything short of world-ending catastrophes. “Stop moping, then,” Natasha tells him, when he asks her to kindly cut it out.

“I’m not moping. I’m—”

“Grieving,” Sam cuts in, and gives them both pointed looks. “Dude’s got a point, Nat.”

“Well, if Steve Granite-Faced Rogers isn’t going to tell us what the hell happened between him and Barnes, then how am I to know what I can and can’t do?”

“There’s nothing to tell, okay?” Steve racks his dumbbells with far more force than he meant. “I wanted a relationship. He wanted—I don’t know.” Steve closes his eyes. “Not that.”

“That does seem like a particularly cruel kind of irony,” Natasha says. “You two used to love each other like crazy back when you couldn’t tell anyone about it. And now that it’s no big deal . . .”

Steve whirls toward her. “Who told you that?”

Natasha rolls her eyes at him and cracks her gum. “What, you think you’re the only person who checks in on Carter every now and then? Besides, her nurse makes the best empanadas.”

“Just—keep it to yourself—the last thing I need—”

“—is reporters harassing Barnes or Carter or you. Please. As if I don’t know how to keep a secret.”

“It’s your business, man,” Sam says. “But trying to start a relationship based on a massive guilt complex? It’s not wonder he spooked.”

“Fine. I get it.” Steve yanks a sweat towel off of the rack. “It isn’t right for either one of us now. The past has passed.”

“And you’re going to stop blaming yourself?” Natasha asks.

Steve exhales and flexes his fingers, prepping for another lift.

“That’s a no,” Sam says.

“I’m not blaming myself,” Steve says, and he can almost believe it. Almost. Even Bucky’s told him, over and over again, that it wasn’t his fault. If he says it enough, eventually he’ll force it to come true. “I just want . . . more than he can give.”

“And that’s nobody’s fault, either,” Sam says.

“Hey. You know what you want. That’s a good start.” Natasha bows forward, catlike, into a stretch.

“A start, maybe.” But for the first time in his life, it seems, Steve isn’t sure how he wants the story to end.

 

*

 

He dreams of confetti raining down Fifth Avenue. Red, white, blue, silver, catching the sunlight, shining like stars, like the heavens themselves are celebrating. He dreams of the smell of sun-warmed leather upholstery as he sits perched on the back of a cabriolet. The crowd is cheering, the band is playing a bright, brassy march, and the flashbulbs are firing away, leaving trails of spent phosphorus hanging in the air.

But none of it matters, it’s all just smoke and whispers compared to this: his sergeant’s fingers laced in his own.

He dreams of holding their hands up in victory. He dreams that the cheers only roar even louder, that the planes hum overhead, trailing banners across the Manhattan sky. He dreams of clutching his sergeant’s face and kissing him right there, for all the world to see. He tastes like springtime, like the victory champagne that flows through the streets, he tastes like promises kept. When Steve pulls his sergeant into his arms, their medaled chests clacking together, it feels like coming home for good.

And the cheers carry them forward while the band plays on.

When Steve wakes up, the melody is still chasing around his thoughts and he can almost believe that Bucky is lying beside him, that they’re home from the war and safe and free and whole. And it makes him queasy to remember the way it really went. It makes him want to sleep for days.

There was a time he didn’t want to come home from the war. So long as he was at war and Bucky was with him, then they never had to think about what would happen when the war ended. They could spend their days and nights together and no one would bat an eye; they could put the obligations of their real lives on hold while they played big damn heroes side by side. He didn’t want the war to end because it meant going home, and in truth, home wasn’t any place they wanted to go.

Steve supposes he got his wish.

 

*

 

Steve sleeps through New Year’s, and wakes up early and picks his way across the wreckage of noisemakers and cupcake wrappers and half-empty martini glasses and passed-out Avengers still clutching bottles of Asgardian liquor to head to the elevators for a jog. He does his usual loop up Fifth and then all through Central Park, and lets the icy air rake its nails through his lungs.

It’s not that he doesn’t know how to live without Bucky, he tells himself. He’s done it before. When Bucky left him for the front. When he woke up in a new century that he didn’t know Bucky had lived to see. It’s just that he’s never learned how to do it well. Maybe part of it was the guilt all wrapped up around his neck. He thinks he’s finally shed that now—that no matter what else is his fault, he got Bucky the help he needed. But maybe it was feeling like he’d lost a limb of his own.

He loves Bucky. Always has and always will. But he can’t fake that he doesn’t love him just for the sake of being near him. He can’t just be a diversion for Bucky, a catharsis, a release. Neither of them deserves for him to lie.

Learning to live without Bucky, though—it just gets harder every time.

 

*

 

_Sent you a check to help with rent. It isn’t much but it’s a start._

 

Steve immediately saves the phone number to his contacts. His whole body is crackling with nervous energy as a million questions build up in his head. He forces himself to take a deep breath and wait a minute before he types out a response.

 

_New job?_

It’s several seconds before the text bubble appears that indicates Bucky’s typing. Then it stops, then starts again, and it feels like eons before the response finally shows up.

 

_Something like that._

 

Steve’s thumbs hover over the keys. He’s not ready for the conversation to end. _Something fun?_ he wants to ask, but what a stupid question—“fun” isn’t really a big part of Bucky’s vocabulary these days. _Something you like?_ , maybe. No, that isn’t right either.

 

_Congratulations!!!_

 

But then he deletes the exclamation marks before hitting Send.

No text bubble appears in response, even though Steve stares at the screen until it dims on its own.

 

*

 

If it’s anyone’s fault, really, it’s Clint’s, because he’s the one who burned the popcorn.

Steve heads into the entertainment room to chew him out, because even the 96-year old knows how to use the fucking Popcorn setting on the microwave, but the moment he steps inside, Natasha leaps— _leaps_ , ballerina grace and all—over a row of theatre seats for the remote control. But it’s too late. Anderson Cooper is already speaking directly into the camera on the wall-sized flatscreen.

“Up next, part two of our exclusive interview as I sit down with the man once known as the Winter Soldier. A decorated war hero turned into a killer against his will over the course of decades, Sergeant Barnes’s story of perseverance and recovery will give you chills. After this break.”

“You, uh . . . weren’t supposed to know about that,” Clint says, as a car commercial blares over them. Natasha hits mute as Steve turns to face them both.

“And why wasn’t I supposed to know?” Steve doesn’t bother to sign as he speaks. His hands are too busy clenching into tight fists at his sides.

Natasha glances at his hands, then back up at him. “Because everyone knew how you’d react.”

“So you’re putting on the kid gloves around me now? Treating me like I can’t make any decisions for myself?”

Clint shrugs. “Worked for Barnes, didn’t it?”

Steve breathes in, ready to scream. Pauses. Breathes out. There’s nothing to say. Nothing left for him to explain.

“He . . . he asked for this,” Natasha says. Her words come halting—a good reminder to Steve just how angry he must look. If Natasha’s afraid of upsetting him, then he must really look frightening. “No one made him do this. That matters, right?”

“Yeah. It matters.” It matters because it’s just one more reminder of the chasm that’s opened up between them. The one he’d thought maybe, just maybe, in their stupid texts, full of stiffness and awkwardness and overly formal punctuation, they’d been on the road to closing it once more.

Once again, Steve was the naïve, hopeful dreamer, just waiting for his fairytale to trip off toward happily ever after, while real life had other plans.

“He never means to hurt you,” Natasha says. “You know that, right?”

Unconsciously, Steve’s fingers brush against his throat. “Intent’s got nothing to do with it. Sometimes it happens all the same.”

She grimaces and pats the empty seat to her right.

Steve squares his shoulders, then sinks into the theatre seat. Natasha motions to move the armrest up between them, but he shakes his head. He doesn’t really want anyone touching him, anyone near him right now. Natasha’s easy to curl up with and say and think and do nothing, when they’re both exhausted and in need of company without having much of anything to say, but he’s too on edge for that now. He wants to hang on Bucky’s every word like it’s a meathook skewering him.

Natasha unmutes the screen as the AC360 bumper graphics play.

Bucky’s hair is starting to grow out again. That’s the first thing Steve notices, as the soft studio lighting caresses the side of his flush, healthy face. He’s smiling the way he used to smile in Howling Commandos strategy meetings—like he knew it was expected of him, but like he didn’t know Steve could feel the anxiety and agitation rolling off of him in waves. It’s still there, then. It’s been there ever since December of 1943, for all that Steve wanted to pretend it wasn’t.

“James.” Anderson Cooper leans in, and Steve has to smile to himself. Even good ol’ Coop’s getting sucked into Bucky’s magnetism. “You’ve endured just—so much. Torture. Brainwashing. And to say nothing of the things they made you do. We don’t even know the half of it here, I know.”

Bucky presses a strained smile deeper into his cheeks and nods. “It’s probably better that way.”

Anderson laughs. “Maybe so, James, maybe so. But if you would—tell me this. How did you survive? What got you through the day under Hydra’s control?”

Bucky exhales, slowly, and the camera closes in on his face. Steve can see his pores from here, the faint creases in his forehead and around the corners of his eyes. “I wish I could tell you there was one thing. But most of the time . . . there was nothing. I forgot my past. I forgot the possibility of a future. All I had was the moment I was living in, and the knowledge that it would slip from my grasp as soon as it was done.” He shakes his head. “They taught me how to survive. In the wilderness, on a long stakeout, against overwhelming odds. So that’s what I clung to. I wish I could say it made me stronger, but . . .”

Anderson raises his eyebrows. “But?”

“But when it comes to being in control of my life now . . . Those survival instincts hurt me more than they help.”

Steve winces and looks away.

“How do you mean?” Anderson asks.

Bucky’s quiet for a long minute, and his silence is a knife, twisting into Steve’s ribs. Finally, he shakes his head and leans forward again. “That survival, my ability to shut down everything but what let me live in the moment . . . that got me through so many terrible things. But those instincts work against me now. Now that I want to enjoy my life, make something more of it than just merely surviving.” He takes another breath. “It works against me. Makes me hurt the people I care about the most.”

Clint shoves a fistful of slightly burnt popcorn into his mouth, but Steve barely notices it. His skin is prickling, painful. The room is too loud and the screen is too bright and the cushioned seat too yielding underneath him.

“Well, that brings me to my next question—the one that I know all our viewers are waiting for.” Anderson looks knowingly at the camera. “I read your tweets, folks, about setting me up on a date with Cap. Don’t think I didn’t see them.”

Smile fading, he turns back to Bucky, whose face has gone cold. There’s too much white around his eyes, like a spooked animal, and he starts to curl back.

“We know you fought with Captain America—Steve Rogers—in World War II. And that you two were best friends from long before even then.”

Bile burns in the back of Steve’s throat.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of Captain Rogers’s recent comments regarding his sexuality—”

“Oh, Anderson, I think everyone in America’s aware of them.” Bucky flashes his most charming smile and it’s just like old times—that disarming, enchanting grin. But Steve knows it for the mask it is. Bucky’s terrified inside. He must be. Because Steve feels it, too.

Anderson chuckles. “Well, then you probably know what I’m going to ask. Were you and Captain Rogers lovers?” he asks. “Are you now?”

Bucky pauses. There’s the faintest flare to his nostrils like he wants to turn and run. Steve becomes aware of a sharp pain in his jaw—he’s been clenching his teeth together and didn’t even notice.

But slowly, Bucky smiles again. Not the one that could soak a Brooklyn girl’s panties at two hundred yards; not the one that bent even Mrs. Moskowitz’s sternest rules for her shop workers. This one is open—soft. It’s a smile Steve wants to kiss, over and over. It’s a smile that makes Steve ache with how badly he wants to, and knows that he can’t.

“Well, the truth is . . .” Bucky looks down at his hand, metal fingers clenching and then unfurling. “That’s really not for me to answer.”

“Funny,” Anderson says, “Captain Rogers said the same thing.”

Bucky laughs, but it’s joyless. Is Steve imagining it, or is there the faintest touch of red to his cheeks? “Well, then I’ll tell you this.” Bucky laces his fingers together and leans forward again, eyes dark and thoughtful. “Steve Rogers is the greatest man I’ve ever known. He’s loyal—but honest. Giving—generous in so many ways. Maybe more than he ought to be. But he’s decisive. Too clever for his own good, sometimes. And he’s always ready—always—to do anything he can to make things right.”

Anderson nods solemnly, but says nothing, waiting for Bucky to continue.

“But Steve . . . he also carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. His credo was always—never let your soldiers see you bleed; take care of your troops before you even think about taking care of yourself.” Bucky sighs, slow, and it’s like a screwdriver twisting Steve’s nerves tight. “I know he blames himself for everything that happened to me. He thinks it’s his fault Hydra got ahold of me, got control of me.”

“And do you think that?” Anderson asks.

Bucky hesitates; Steve’s heart is in his throat. “That’s not easy to answer. I mean—Hydra told me so. They used it as part of their brainwashing—making me blame Steve, blame all the people in my life. To isolate and dissociate me, I think, is what my therapist called it. They—” Bucky’s voice hitches. “They took all these good feelings I had about Steve, all my positive associations with him, and turned me against him. Turned me against everyone but Hydra.”

Anderson nods, his expression still blank. “You’re a strong man, Sergeant Barnes.”

“No—no. I’m not. That’s just it.” Bucky swallows, and Steve can see—even though it’s only pixelated—the faintest rim of water in Bucky’s eyes. “The truth is, if it weren’t for Steve, I never would have been saved.”

Anderson nods. “We know Captain Rogers was instrumental in stopping you—in stopping the Winter Soldier, rather—and the rest of Hydra from their attempted takeover last spring.”

“It was all Steve. He helped me remember myself. By—by remembering him. His goodness—it helped me break free of their control. And then, afterward, his goodness is what made me get the help I need, even though I wanted anything but.”

Steve sinks into the chair. Bucky can’t be right—he didn’t do all that. It was still his fault, and he was only trying to pay off a debt that can never be erased—

“Because of Steve Rogers, I’m Bucky Barnes. It was true when we were kids, it was true when we were in the war, and today, it’s more true than ever. Steve made me who I was, and he’s helped remake me into who I am now. I’m not the same Bucky Barnes as before, sure. But I’m finally becoming a Bucky Barnes I can live with, thanks to Steve. And I’m—I’m finding more of myself every day.”

Anderson nods once more. “So Steve means something very important to you.”

The tear drips free and tracks its way over the sharp curve of Bucky’s cheekbone, toward his cleft chin. Steve catches himself wanting to reach out to wipe it away, but Bucky smears it with the back of his hand.

“You—you asked me if we’re lovers. And I can’t answer that,” Bucky says. “I don’t—don’t deserve that, really. I don’t. But if you ask me if I love Steve Rogers?”

Anderson leans forward.

“Then the answer’s yes. It’s always been yes. And it always will.”

 

*

 

Their halfhearted attempts at text conversations stop after the interview airs.

Bucky’s still sending him checks. The first one was for all of three hundred bucks, but the next one jumps up considerably. Nothing compared to a Brooklyn brownstone mortgage, but it’s still too much. It hurts Steve to accept it. But it’s only his stubborn pride, he tells himself; it means more to Bucky that he make an effort to pay his own way. Steve deposits the checks but they just sit in his account, untouched.

“Hey,” Natasha says one lazy afternoon, when the world’s quiet for once. “Walk with me?”

“Where to?” Steve asks. As if he has anything better to do besides exercise, read books that always make him think about Bucky—no matter the subject—and stare out the window.

She shrugs. “Coffee? And I gotta drop something off for a friend.”

“Sure,” Steve says, a little slower this time. His guard’s raised. But Natasha keeps up a steady stream of chatter as they make their way down to street level and head toward Natasha’s favorite coffee shop that’s a step up from Starbucks but still several miles below the atmosphere of hand-roasted cold brew.

“You got too much time on your hands, Rogers,” Natasha says as they wait in line. She’s speaking low, but not low enough. They’re already getting a few stares, and Steve can practically _smell_ the curiosity radiating off the other patrons as they pretend not to lean in closer to hear Avengers talking amongst themselves.

Steve just shrugs and jams his hands into his pockets. “That means we’re doing our job.”

Natasha smiles with only one corner of her mouth. “Which means you have more time for a hobby. You remember those, right?”

“I dunno. Back in the day, my hobbies were drawing, getting my ass kicked for running my mouth, and terrorizing . . .” He trails off. “Bucky. So—I guess not all of that’s changed.”

Some, though.

Natasha raises one eyebrow. “He was never just a hobby for you, and you know it.”

Steve shakes his head. “No. He wasn’t.”

“He misses you.” Natasha twists one finger in the fringe of her scarf. “I hope you know that.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve looks away. “Doesn’t mean it’s meant to be. Not anymore.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not, either.”

Steve fixes her with a hard look before she turns and shuffles up to the counter to order.

Bucky’s still healing, and Steve understands that. The way he feels now—or the last time they saw each other in person, anyway—won’t be how he feels forever. Maybe there’s a future where he won’t be afraid. Won’t need to leave himself like he does now. But Steve can’t pin his hopes on it, and he can’t love Bucky any other way.

It’s better this way, he tells himself, for what must be the thousandth time.

After Steve orders, he saunters over to where Natasha’s waiting for her coffee, finger still coiled around her scarf. She’s wrestling with something, he can tell—she never wears her emotions on her face like this, her jaw tight and her eyes heavy. “Hey,” he says, tapping her wrist gently. “What’s really going on?”

She cuts her eyes across the café again, then leans in closer. “I—I know I never told you this, but . . . I knew him. Then.”

“Then?” Steve says, eyebrows wrinkled, but then it dawns on him. “Oh—oh.”

She smiles helplessly.

“I mean—I’d always wondered, but—”

“No, no. It’s fine. I don’t—I mean, he probably doesn’t remember it. Which is fine. I was . . . not the same person I am now,” Natasha says. She’s picking her words carefully as poker chips, but her body’s still all nervous tension.

“I guess none of us are,” Steve says. But it’s an automatic response. In his head, his mind’s whirling. How much did she know about how they’d made the Winter Soldier into what he was? How complicit had she been in any of it?

“We never—” She flaps the edge of her scarf out, then lets it drop. “I mean, we went on a couple of the same missions. But that was it. There wasn’t any ‘hang around and chew the fat with your comrades’ for him. And it’s not like anyone was eager to talk about who or what he was.” She shrugs, then looks down at the floor for a minute. “But it’s not like I couldn’t guess.”

“That isn’t your fault, Nat. Look, I’m sorry—”

“No.” She drops the word like a weight. “It isn’t _your_ fault. But I knew what had been done to him. I could’ve spoken up. I could’ve done . . . something. _Any_ thing.” She shakes her head, a red curl working free of her sloppy bun. “And then, when I did see them for what they were, I only thought of myself when I broke free. Didn’t try to take anyone with me. Never even crossed my mind.”

“If you had to do it over again,” Steve says, “I know you’d do differently.”

She nods. “And that’s what matters.”

“What?” Steve asks.

“Learning. Being patient with ourselves while we do.” She smiles sadly. “To say nothing of the other people in our lives.”

The barista calls out their orders and they fetch their cups, but as Steve turns toward the door, Natasha catches him by the collar of his coat. “Oh, no, you don’t. Told you I had another errand.”

Steve’s chest goes tight—like an old asthma attack, but this time it’s panic closing his lungs. “Natasha . . .”

“Just . . . trust me. Please.” She looks up at him, hazel eyes glinting, and Steve can’t do anything but nod.

Natasha leads him deeper into the coffee house, toward the semi-private rooms where he’s seen people meet for creative projects or study groups before. Only the dull drone of voices rises above the jazz music piped through the speaker system, but then someone says—“I didn’t want to kill them.”

It’s a man’s voice—practically a boy’s. Steve falters as Natasha leans against the hallway wall.

“I only wanted to help. That’s what they told me we were there for, after all. To help people. Free them. You know?” The guy chokes back a sob. “But when it came down to them or me—”

“—You did what instinct told you to do,” someone says.

And this time, Steve knows the voice all too well.

He turns toward Natasha, who’s sipping her latte and studiously avoiding his gaze. “Tash, what the hell—” Steve starts to whisper.

“That’s what combat is,” Bucky’s voice says. There’s a reediness to his tone, but he’s forcing his way through it, trying to keep his words clear. “Grinding you down till you’re nothing but instinct, the ones they’ve drilled into you. They don’t give you time to process, find the logic behind it, until much later. And that’s when it hits you all at once. The certainty that there’s something different you could have done.”

Steve sinks against the side of the wall.

“And that’s the guilt that eats away at us—that if we’d been in control, we might have acted differently. Been a different person, even.” A long pause. “But we no longer have to be the same person who got forced into battle. We don’t have to keep those instincts. We can find new ones. Forge new paths.”

After a few minutes, a handful of people make their way out of the meeting room—a woman with dead, haunted eyes, a man in a motorized chair. They burrow deep in their coats as if they’re already outside, already shielding themselves from the cold.

“C’mon,” Natasha says, nudging Steve’s arm. “You wanted to know what he’s doing these days.”

They approach the room’s entrance, and see Bucky speaking in low tones with a woman in a brightly colored skirt suit, both of them reviewing something on a clipboard. Bucky’s hands are jammed in the pockets of his skinny jeans and his shoulders are up at his ears as he listens to her. Steve could swear he’s seen the woman before, but can’t place her, can’t conjure up a name.

“Vivian Wallace,” Natasha whispers. “Head of the Stark Foundation’s Veterans Work Program.”

Steve inhales, nodding to himself. One of Tony’s big charities. Something about helping vets ease the transition back into civilian life while coping with physical and psychological challenges. Steve had spoken at their fundraisers a few times, back before . . . before Bucky, Hydra, before everything crashed down around him. God, it felt like it was crashing still.

Vivian glances up. “Captain Rogers!” she says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Steve opens his mouth, trying and failing not to look at Bucky, who’s staring square at Steve with a look Steve can’t even begin to decrypt.

“We just wanted to say hi to Barnes,” Natasha says in a rush, stepping forward. “Congratulate him on his new position.”

“Right. Strategy Consultant for our outreach division. As part of his training, he’s helping me lead a few informal group sessions.” She flashes a quick smile at Bucky, and looks undeterred when he doesn’t smile back. “We’re so grateful to have Sergeant Barnes on board. It’s really helped us destigmatize the whole concept of soldiers seeking help after they return home.”

“That’s . . . that’s wonderful,” Steve says, glancing at Bucky again. Bucky’s wrapped his arms around his torso now, the sleeves of his long-sleeved thermal pulled down over his hands. “Congratulations, Sarge.”

Bucky manages a faint smile. “Thanks.”

“Actually,” Natasha says loudly, “Tony sent me to check a couple of scheduling questions with you, Viv. If you have a moment?”

“Of course.” Viv’s gaze darts toward Bucky and Steve before she turns toward Natasha. “Let’s step into the hall.”

Steve stifles a groan. Nat’s at it again. He appreciates it, really he does, but she doesn’t know the whole story. She can’t possibly. He barely knows it himself.

With another look at Bucky, the only thing Steve’s certain of is that he can’t ever stop loving the man Bucky used to be, and has no idea how to love the one he is without hurting himself.

“She told me you saw the interview,” Bucky says. It’s under his breath, almost like he’s hoping Steve won’t hear him.

Steve leans back on his heels and drums his fingers against his coffee cup. “You’ve come a long way, Buck.”

He nods, gaze still lowered. His hair’s long enough it needs to be tucked behind his ears again, but a stray lock falls in front of his face. Steve’s fingers twitch, yearning to tuck it back. Yearning to touch Bucky, period.

“I meant it,” Bucky says.

Steve closes his eyes, and for a moment, the outline of Bucky before him becomes that grinning, desperate Bucky who clung to him in the cold of the Alps. Who covered up every horror that had been done to him—so many, even then, that Steve didn’t know—with a frayed laugh and a hungry kiss. Steve loved that Bucky. He loved the Bucky who stood before him on the helicarrier, gun in hand. He loved the Bucky who squeezed Steve’s cold feet between his calves and held him close on their tiny Murphy bed as the sounds of Brooklyn lulled them to sleep. He loved them all.

“I love you too,” Steve says. Like a curse. “It doesn’t change what I want.”

Bucky’s shoulders curl in tighter.

“I—I don’t just love you, Buck. I’m in love with you. I always have been.” Steve swallows. “But I can’t be just another person you lock out. I can’t let you hold me at arm’s length. Whether it’s through this—this violence, or control, or just plain ghosting on me. Leaving me with your shell. I need—more.”

“I know,” Bucky says. “You deserve more.”

Steve lets out his breath. “If you need a friend, fine, I can do that, but I can’t go halfway on this. I can’t . . .”

Bucky shifts his weight and forces his arms down to his sides with the faintest clack of metal. “What if I wanted to try?”

“Try?” Steve blinks. “What, like I’m a new dance routine? Come on. I don’t need you to do things you don’t want for me either—”

“But—but I do want it. To try, I mean. Try having something real.”

Steve takes a step back. “You don’t mean it. Please don’t—”

“We’ve never had that, have we? It’s always been a secret, always something shameful.” Bucky’s voice catches on the last word. “And all these instincts I have when it comes to being around you, all these things I remember from when I first loved you, they’re all poisoned.”

Now Steve’s wrapped one arm around himself, biceps taut. “Look, if you’re not ready—”

“I—I am. And I love you enough to try.” He looks Steve square in the eye. “I’m sorry. For not giving you myself, before. For keeping up those walls. I’m sorry I treated you . . .”

Steve leans forward, his breath held.

“—Like you were just another trial. Like I had to control you if I wanted to survive.”

“Bucky,” Steve says.

“I love you.” Bucky winces. “Always will. And that should—that makes it worth the effort.”

Steve’s jaw works as he tries to think of what to say. But there aren’t any words. He steps forward again instead, one hand raised. Bucky tightens again, but doesn’t move away as Steve brushes his fingers over Bucky’s lips. They're soft once more, not the chapped, chewed-up mess Bucky had made of them before. Bucky shakes as Steve’s thumb catches, tugging his lip to one side, but doesn’t pull away. Steve’s thumb draws downward, down the cleft of Bucky’s chin, down the sharp line of his throat and his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

Looking into Bucky’s eyes, Steve takes another step toward him.

He leans in, breathing in Bucky’s clean scent, feeling his warmth hang in the air. There’s a day of stubble on Bucky’s cheek as Steve’s cheek grazes past it. Slowly, Steve turns his head, and kisses his cheek. Bucky lets out the softest gasp. His fists are tight at his sides, but slowly, his eyelids flutter shut.

Steve kisses the corner of Bucky’s mouth, where stubble meets soft, pillowy lips, and Bucky’s mouth parts. Steve kisses his mouth. For the briefest second, Bucky jerks away, but then he presses back against Steve’s lips, his mouth opened, inviting.

Steve reaches for Bucky’s hips—not pulling him closer, but holding him in place, praying he won’t slip away from him this time. His tongue slides against Bucky’s lower lip, tentative, but he waits until Bucky’s tongue meets his before pushing deeper. They kiss slowly, Steve struggling to restrain himself even as his pulse hammers, but he lets Bucky set the pace. Keeps it gentle. And as Steve’s own eyes close, he forgets where they are, when they are; all he knows and all he cares is Bucky’s mouth on his and Bucky’s body before him and Bucky’s heart so close to his own.

With a sigh, Steve pulls back and opens his eyes. Bucky’s are still closed; his tongue darts against his lower lip as if he’s still trying to taste Steve there.

“Was—was that all right?” Steve whispers.

Bucky’s face flushes as he nods.

Steve lets go of him and steps back, but he can’t shake the massive smile carving across his face.

“Listen . . .” Bucky licks his lips again, then opens his eyes. “I’ve got a long list of people I need to ask forgiveness from. Some for little things, some for way worse. But you . . . you’re at the top.”

“Bucky—”

Bucky holds up one hand. “Please. And I’m not just talking about what I did to you when I was the Winter Soldier.”

Steve smiles again, though it’s more strained this time. “I mean, you did shoot me in the stomach a few times.”

“Okay, but in fairness, you dislocated my arm, so—”

They laugh, and it isn’t until they stop that Steve realizes it’s the first time he’s heard Bucky laugh since 1945.

Bucky lowers his brows, expression serious once more. “There’s plenty I did before then, and plenty I’ve done since. I shouldn’t have broken your heart just before the war, even though I thought I was protecting you by doing it.”

“Bucky, it’s—”

“Just let me finish.” He exhales. “I—I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you all those times over the past few months. I knew what you wanted, and I knew I couldn’t give it to you, but I thought . . .” He blinks and looks away. “I shouldn’t have hurt you. God, I’m so sorry, Steve. I’m so sorry.”

Now Steve is the one shaking.

“I can’t undo it, and I can’t excuse it. All I can do is do better from now on. And I’m going to—know that I’m going to.” Bucky glances back at him, eyes watery. “Know that I’m sorry.”

Steve reaches out to embrace him, and for a long minute they cling to each other, Bucky’s arms slowly reaching up and tightening to match Steve’s fierce grip. And it’s exactly as Steve remembered. Bucky’s tenser and his metal arm squashes him something fierce, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still Bucky.

He still loves him. Everything he is and was. And everything they might yet be.

 

*

 

The twinkle of streetlights seeps up through the curtains of the master bedroom in the Brooklyn brownstone. The high crown-moulding ceilings soak up the golden light a spread it out above them as Bucky sits down, cross-legged, on the bed. He watches Steve expectantly, guarded, his bare toes twitching with some nervous tic.

“We’re going to take this slow, okay?” Steve asks, and waits for Bucky to nod. “Tell me the minute you feel uncomfortable.”

Bucky smiles shyly. “Now that you mention it, I’d feel _way_ more comfortable if you were wearing a lot less clothes.”

Steve laughs and starts to tug his sweater off. “I did say _slow_.”

“I know.” Bucky’s smile fades. “And I—I’ll tell you. Promise.”

“Good.”

Steve moves to the edge of the bed, still standing, and lowers his head toward Bucky’s until their foreheads rest together. He curls both hands around Bucky’s neck, letting his warm palms seep against Bucky’s cool skin, then pushes Bucky’s jaw upward with his thumbs. Those cold blue eyes lock onto Steve’s, Bucky’s pupils dark and wide; by fractions, the tension in Bucky’s neck seeps away and his lips part.

Steve closes his eyes and lets their mouths slot together. This time, Bucky’s ready, his nervous twitch barely perceptible as their tongues brush against each other. He tastes spicy from their dinner, warm and rich, and so fucking right it makes Steve’s stomach go tight. He catches Bucky’s lower lip in his teeth, which makes Bucky whimper; Steve’s eyes widen, but Bucky isn’t pulling away, isn’t stopping him, so he lets Bucky’s lip tug free on its own before kissing him again.

Steve keeps one hand firm at Bucky’s neck as he lets one run down his chest, along the thermal Henley Bucky wears. “This is a good color on you,” Steve says, turning his mouth toward Bucky’s ear. “Shirt’s a little tight.”

Bucky manages a nervous laugh. “Didn’t think you’d complain.”

Steve pulls the Henley free from Bucky’s jeans and brushes his fingers up the bare skin of Bucky’s abdomen. Bucky shudders again, so Steve leaves his fingertips where they are, and kisses the velvet patch of skin where Bucky’s jaw meets with his ear.

“You’re so goddamned gorgeous. Always have been,” Steve says quietly. He lets his hand shift upward again, and Bucky eases into it this time as Steve flicks his thumb over one nipple. “I used to stare at you for hours back in school, wishing I could taste every part of you.”

Bucky smiles, then his breath hitches as Steve’s fingers coax at his nipple again. “Mighta been more entertaining than reading Hawthorne, that’s for sure.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Way to kill the mood.” Steve flicks his tongue against the tip of Bucky’s earlobe, and this time, the shiver he draws out of him is definitely a good one. Bucky untucks his legs and pulls Steve in between his thighs as Steve’s teeth drag against his earlobe.

Steve straightens up, then, eyes locked on Bucky’s, he begins to roll the Henley up. Bucky raises his arms, not breaking eye contact. His jaw is clenched shut as Steve pulls the Henley off of him, but when Steve curls his hands over Bucky’s bared chest, he relaxes once more.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs. He kisses Bucky’s collarbone; kisses the crease between his pecs. “It’s me.”

Bucky nods and kisses the crown of Steve’s head.

Steve teases one of Bucky’s nipples into his mouth and sucks at it, tongue darting against it while he nibbles at the surrounding skin. Bucky inhales sharply, spine arching. His fingers card through Steve’s hair as Steve sucks more forcefully and grins up at him. “Good?” Steve whispers.

Bucky nods, smiling faintly now. “Good.”

Steve’s mouth trails lower until he reaches the thin strip of hair beneath Bucky’s navel that disappears into the waistband of his jeans. His teeth click against the fly as he bites at the waistband and tugs, but a sharp inhale from Bucky stops him.

Steve immediately straightens up, ignoring the uncomfortable press of his own erection inside his jeans as he does so. “Talk to me, Buck.”

Bucky’s smile is gone; he blinks once, twice, and licks his lips as if his mouth has dried out. “I just . . . I’m sorry.”

Steve cradles Bucky’s face in both of his hands; Bucky nuzzles into his palms, eyes lidding. “What happened?” Steve asks, after giving him a moment’s peace. “What can I do differently?”

“I just—I had this urge to—to fight you off,” Bucky says with a sigh. “Hurt you. Pin you against the wall.”

Steve grimaces as his blood flow responds to that image. “As fun as that last one would be . . .”

“I know. We’re not there yet. _I’m_ not, where I can do that without . . . going somewhere else.” Bucky shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

Steve kisses Bucky’s forehead a few times as he thinks. “Well, I do have one option.”

“Yeah?” Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“I’d . . . I’d need you to trust me. A lot.”

Bucky shivers for a moment in Steve’s hands. “I do.”

Steve studies him for a minute, considering. “Okay. But the minute you change your mind, it doesn’t matter what, you tell me, all right?”

Bucky nods again.

Steve takes a deep breath and backs away from the bed to dig around in his overnight bag. With a clank of metal, he fishes out the handcuffs he’d “borrowed” from the tower’s armory, then dangles them toward Bucky.

Bucky chews at his lower lip. “You know that isn’t enough to stop me. Or you, for that matter.”

“I don’t care about restraining you,” Steve says. “But if it helps remind you . . .”

He approaches the bed again, and leans in to kiss Bucky. Bucky’s lips tighten against his, but his gaze is inward—elsewhere. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Okay. That’s the point, right?” He smiles, though it’s tinged in bitterness. “Let you take control for once. Remind me that I can let my guard down.”

“Exactly.” Steve looks into his eyes. “If you’re sure it’s okay.”

Bucky gives a forceful jerk with his chin. “I’m sure. But promise me one thing.”

“Anything,” Steve says.

Bucky smiles for real this time. “Take those goddamned clothes off already, since I won’t be able to do it for you.”

Steve answers him with another kiss, pressing him down into the pillows as he does. With a laugh, Bucky scoots back toward the headboard. Steve clicks one handcuff around Bucky’s right arm, then, after threading it around the bed posts, secures the other on Bucky’s metal wrist. Bucky’s eyes are closed, so Steve kisses each of his brows. “Stay with me,” he whispers.

Bucky opens his eyes and slowly focuses on Steve. “Not leaving you again.”

Steve smiles, blinking back a rush of emotion. Then he peels off his t-shirt and reaches for the fly of his jeans. Bucky sucks in his breath as Steve works his jeans and boxer briefs down around his thighs and closes one fist around his cock to coax it to full hardness.

“God, I’ve missed that sight.” Bucky runs his tongue along the edge of his teeth.

“Hope you’ve missed how it feels, too.” Steve winces as a stripe of precome paints his hand. He raises his palm up and slowly laps it away as Bucky whimpers from the bed.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. Less forcefully, but it’s there. “I’ve just missed . . . you.”

Finally, he pulls his jeans and briefs completely off, then approaches the bed. Locks eyes with Bucky. Then climbs onto him, knees straddling Bucky’s hips. Bucky’s limbs tense as Steve leans forward. “God, I’ve missed you,” Steve says. “The world isn’t complete without you in it.”

Bucky’s cheeks darken, and he glances away.

“Hey.” Steve presses one finger to Bucky’s cheek and turns his face back toward his. “I mean it.”

“I’m not . . . I’m just me.”

“You’re everything,” Steve says. “To me, you’re everything.”

Now it’s Bucky leaning up for a kiss. Steve relents, tasting every inch of Bucky’s mouth, relishing the way their lips fit together. Like they’ve always fit. As if they were meant to.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” Steve says, once they break apart. “You deserve to be taken care of.”

Bucky gives him a watery smile and nods.

Steve scoots down the length of Bucky’s legs and admires the Adonis V where Bucky’s hips disappear into his low-rise jeans. He nudges open the button on his fly, smirking when the heel of his palm brushes against the length of Bucky’s cock, then looks up toward Bucky’s face. Bucky flinches for a moment, but sinks back into the mattress as he looks back at Steve. Steve clicks his zipper open, agonizingly slow, then starts to push his jeans down around his thighs.

“Someone was planning to get lucky?” Steve asks, when he realizes Bucky’s not wearing any underwear.

Bucky smiles. “Something like that.”

Steve stands up just long enough to pull Bucky’s jeans completely off and snatch the bottle of lube from his bag, then straddles his calves. Bucky’s cock is resting flat against his stomach, flushed and pearly with precome. Steve wants nothing more than to lap at it now, suck it down all at once, but he’s got to take it slow. He’s got to keep Bucky grounded.

Steve places a kiss on the inside of Bucky’s thigh, just above his knee, then nibbles at the sensitive skin there. Bucky moans, twisting toward one side until Steve guides his hips back down.

“That’s a good boy. So eager and hard for me.” Steve kisses his inner thigh again, higher this time. “I like seeing you enjoy yourself. Love taking care of you.”

Bucky sighs softly. “Keep talking to me,” he murmurs.

Steve nods and glides his tongue further up Bucky’s thigh. “Love the way it makes you look,” he says, mouth hovering just over Bucky’s taut balls. “And how you’re gonna look when I’m done with you.”

Bucky bites his lower lip, head pushing back into the pillow.

Steve cups his mouth around his balls where they meet Bucky’s thigh, and Bucky’s hips thrust forward as he swears. Steve swirls his tongue against him before lifting his mouth away. “Good?”

“Amazing,” Bucky says.

Steve hears the sound of his metal fist clenching and unclenching and grins, then slowly circles the base of Bucky’s dick with his thumb and forefinger. Bucky breathes in deep, his whole body coiling like a spring.

“—Do you remember?” Steve asks quickly. Keep him grounded. “That time I fucked you raw in the London pub.”

Bucky’s muscles start to unwind. “God, yes.”

Steve laughs, some of the strain coming out of his voice. “You looked so wrecked. It was incredible. We tried to play it off, but I bet everyone in that goddamn pub knew exactly what we’d been doing.”

Bucky smiles down at him. “I remember you could hardly even bring yourself to say it, back then.”

“What’s that? That I want to fuck you?” Steve traces the edge of his tongue around Bucky’s head, making him cry out. “That I want to suck you dry?”

“So fucking do it already,” Bucky growls.

Victory. Steve sinks his lips around Bucky’s cock, letting his tongue swish against him, against the thick veins underneath. He tastes salty with the faintest sour tang, and instantly Steve is seventeen again, fooling around with Bucky for the first time, learning just how fun it is to make Bucky squirm with nothing but a good, forceful suck. He hollows his cheeks and draws Bucky deeper into his mouth, then glances up at him through his eyelashes.

Bucky’s face is screwed up. He hasn’t given himself over entirely to Steve, but he’s close—maybe as close as they’re going to get, for now. Steve laves his tongue against Bucky’s shaft for a moment longer as he bobs his lips up and down. Bucky’s hips rise up to meet him, and he gives one last pull with his mouth before slowly releasing him.

“Good?” Steve asks. As if he can’t tell—but he has to ask. He has to do this right.

Bucky nods, drawing a ragged breath. “Fucking amazing.”

Steve grins, and it’s like yet another weight lifting away from him. He nudges Bucky’s thighs apart and nestles between them, though Bucky’s clenched his cheeks together. “Tell me more,” Steve says. _Stay with me_ , he thinks—the hardest part is yet to come. “Tell me what else you remember.”

“I remember one time it was too goddamned hot to be in our apartment. It was like an oven in there,” Bucky says. “We went up to the roof to cool off and look at the stars. But you had other plans.”

“Yeah?” Steve grins.

Bucky laughs faintly. “You ate me out like I was a goddamn ice cream sundae. It was unreal.”

Steve pushes at Bucky’s thighs to widen them more, but Bucky’s muscles press back at him. He curls one finger and traces it from his balls toward his tight hole. “Is . . . is that what you want me to do now?”

Bucky hesitates; his thighs press closer together.

“Hold still,” Steve snaps.

For a long moment, Bucky doesn’t say anything, and Steve curses himself. He’s gone too far. As much as he trusts Steve, he’s not ready to yield that much control yet. And he shouldn’t have to.

But slowly, Bucky forces his legs apart once more. “So sorry, Cap,” he drawls. “I won’t let it happen again.”

Steve grins so hard his jaw aches, then lowers his chin toward the mattress and scoots forward. He reaches underneath Bucky to pry his ass open wider, then pauses. Every time since— _since_ —it’s always been Bucky. Bucky taking control, Bucky penetrating him, Bucky putting up all those walls between them. No question as to why. It’s all Steve can do to keep the grainy black and white footage at bay now. And if he can’t forget it, he can’t even begin to imagine what’s running through Bucky’s mind—

Steve kisses the inside of his thigh once more and strokes his thumbs against Bucky’s firm cheeks. “Sergeant,” he murmurs. “If you have any objections, you better voice them now. Because otherwise I’m going to eat this ass six ways to Sunday.”

Bucky trembles for a moment. “Please,” he says. Then softer, tinier—“Please, Steve.”

Steve braces himself and nudges his tongue against the tight band of muscle at Bucky’s hole.

Steve has to stifle a moan at the feel of it as Bucky starts to unclench around his tongue. After a few tentative thrusts, he pushes his tongue deeper. Bucky tastes just like he remembers—so earthy and rich, so completely and utterly divine, and he’s not going to think about the tape, he’s not going to think about Hydra, he’s not going to think about anything else, because he loves Bucky, he loves him and he wants him, he wants him safe and he wants him for himself, and by god, he’s going to give Bucky Barnes the best fucking orgasm he’s had since the 1940s if it’s the last thing he does.

“Oh, Jesus,” Bucky moans as Steve’s tongue presses farther in and he closes his mouth all around Bucky’s hole. “Oh, fuck, Steve. I forgot how fucking good you feel like this.” His hips twist in time with Steve’s tongue. “Jesus Christ, Stevie—”

Steve pulls his tongue out and backs away to a sharp whine from Bucky. Sparks swim around his vision for a moment—everything felt so normal, so natural, that he’d forgotten himself, had just lost himself in Bucky. Maybe he should lose himself—not make this life and death. Forget everything and start over.

He reaches for the bottle of lube and watches Bucky’s face as the cap clicks open. Bucky’s eyes dart toward the bottle and he manages a slow nod.

“You want this, Sarge?” Steve asks. He squirts a handful into his palm and, sitting up on his knees, spreads it around his own cock. Shudders at the tingling cold. “I wanna hear it.”

Bucky nods again. “I need you, Cap,” he whispers.

“Good. Good boy.” Steve squeezes another dollop of lube onto his fingertips, then presses the tip of his middle finger against Bucky’s hole. Bucky tenses again, but says nothing as Steve uses two fingers, then three to work more lube inside of him. “You’re so fucking good, Buck. I’m dying to feel you again.”

Bucky makes a strained smile, then draws his knees up toward his chest.

Steve slots his torso between Bucky’s thighs and grips his own cock and guides it toward Bucky’s hole. He lets the very tip of the head rest against the flexing muscle there, then looks toward Bucky’s face. His eyes are closed, screwed shut.

“Bucky.” Steve’s the one pleading, now. “Bucky. Please look at me.”

Bucky’s nostrils flare, then he slowly opens his eyes.

“Do you want this?” Steve asks. He takes in Bucky’s dark gaze, his widened pupils, mouth so red and juicy. He takes in the lean, sturdy lines of Bucky’s body and the thick muscles of his legs bent up around Steve. His Bucky. It’s _his_ Bucky. They aren’t the same people—but they’re still the same souls, and he never wants his soul untangled from Bucky’s. Not ever again.

Bucky nods. “I want you, Steve.” And then he smiles, and it’s like daybreak burning away the last bit of heaviness in Steve’s heart. “I want _you_.”

So Steve sinks inside of him, and this time there’s no fucking chance of thinking about anything else, because Bucky’s ass is like a fist around him and all he can see are sparks.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Steve moans, and Bucky whimpers too as Steve presses all the way in.

Steve angles himself between Bucky’s legs, keeping himself buried inside him, and kisses Bucky’s stomach, his nipple again. Bucky’s eyes are closed as he kisses his way up to Bucky’s chin and his mouth. Bucky kisses him back, but it’s sluggish, distracted.

“I wanna see those gorgeous blue eyes, Buck. Can you do that?”

Bucky’s lower lip quivers, but he nods and opens his eyes. The last bit of tension fades as he looks back at Steve.

“I’m gonna take good care of you, sweetheart,” Steve says.

Bucky exhales, his smile spreading. “You always do.”

Steve laughs, too happy for words, and begins to thrust in slow, steady rolls of his hips. He keeps his gaze on Bucky, grinning each time he hits against Bucky’s prostate and Bucky moans. The world is in Bucky’s gaze, in his wry smile; it’s in Steve’s arms hooked through Bucky’s legs and Bucky’s warmth tightening around him, and god, if he doesn’t feel just as amazing as he felt seventy years ago, and all Steve wants is another seventy years, this time with Bucky at his side.

“Oh, Jesus.” Bucky’s eyes shut and his face screws up, but it’s far different from before. “Oh, fuck, Stevie.”

“You gonna come for me, baby?” Steve asks, snapping his hips up forcefully.

“Shit.” Bucky bites his lip and nods.

Steve grabs at Bucky’s cock and gives it a firm pump with each thrust. “Let me hear you,” Steve says. “Let me hear how good it feels. I don’t give a fuck about the neighbors or anybody else. We don’t have to care anymore.” He pounds forward, sharper now. “I just want to hear you.”

“Fuck,” Bucky says. “Oh, fuck, I’ve missed your dick. Holy fucking shit, I need you so bad . . .” He’s an incoherent mess. But, Steve notices, no Russian.

He slams harder, his own wave cresting. “Come for me, sweetheart,” Steve growls.

Bucky moans, his come shooting across Steve’s hand and his stomach, and Steve tosses his head back as white-hot bliss swallows him up. He bucks forward and buries himself there as the waves crash over him, then sags forward. Breathes in. Out. Kisses Bucky, wherever he can reach.

And they’re just two men in each other’s arms. Falling across time. Against all odds. They’re back here, in each other’s arms. No more walls or fear or anything else to keep them apart.

For the first time since he came out of the ice, Steve knows—he _knows_ —that he’s finally home.

“I love you,” Steve says, the words slurred with his sated exhaustion. He kisses Bucky’s cheek. “I love you more than anything.”

Bucky turns his head to look at him eye to eye. “I love you so goddamn much, Steve.”

Steve kisses him again, wet and sloppy, before pushing himself up and easing out of Bucky. He unlocks the handcuffs, and Bucky’s arms fall limp to his sides. Bucky makes no motion to get up; he just stares at Steve like he’s never seen him naked before, a smile soft as rain perched on his lips.

Steve fetches a towel for them both and helps them clean up. As soon as he’s done, Bucky sits up and seizes Steve’s face to pull him in for another kiss, mouths gliding effortlessly together. Steve sinks onto the bed beside Bucky, and Bucky curls up against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, words muffled.

“You’re healing,” Steve replies. “And you’re amazing. Just amazing.”

Bucky shakes his head and burrows deeper into Steve and the mattress. “I’m not. I’m not America’s fucking golden boy, I’m not some saint just because I happened to stay alive—”

“No. You’re amazing for doing more than staying alive now. For every single day.” Steve strokes his hair, slow and patient. “But even if you weren’t—I’d still love you. I’m just grateful you’re willing to try.”

“I’m grateful you’re willing to let me,” Bucky says. Finally, he twists his head to look back up at Steve. “St-stay with me?”

Steve blinks back a fresh surge of tears. “Always.”

 

*

 

“Captain Rogers.” The reporter shoves her way forward through the crowd. “Can you confirm that the creature you encountered was not actually a creature at all, but another extradimensional cryptid—”

“Mister Stark!” Another reporter jumps to his feet. “Is it true that the infamous Winter Soldier is not only attending these press junkets—” he cuts his eyes toward Bucky. “—But now an actual member of your team?”

Tony snorts and leans over his podium’s mic. “We are, on certain occasions, calling on Barnes’s decades of expertise—”

“Captain Rogers!” yet another reporter shouts over the crowd. “Will you state, once and for all, whether Sergeant Barnes was your lover during the war?”

Steve stammers and takes a step back from his podium, stopping himself from glancing back at the row of chairs behind him, where Bucky, Sam, Natasha, Clint, and several others sit. “I don’t—see how that’s relevant—”

“It isn’t relevant.” Bucky stands up and joins Steve at the podium. Steve feels his whole body flush bright red as Bucky slips one hand into the back pocket of Steve’s slacks. “The only thing that matters is that we’re lovers now.”

Steve turns toward Bucky as the reporters start shouting over each other even more than they were about the extradimensional cryptids. And Bucky—Bucky just grins back at him with that devilish grin that caused as many problems as it solved back in old Brooklyn. They’d decided it didn’t matter what people knew about them either way, so technically, Bucky isn’t breaking that agreement. Slowly, Steve grins back at him, shaking his head.

“I love you, you fucking punk,” Steve says under his breath.

“Captain Rogers?”

“Sergeant Barnes?”

Bucky tightens his grip on Steve’s ass and presses him close. “Love you too, Cap.”

“Steve—”

“James—”

Bucky curls his metal arm around Steve’s shoulder and kisses him, slow, stubble brushing against Steve’s lips, tongue probing against Steve’s teeth. And Steve kisses him back. Because he’s free now—they’re both free. From everything. From everyone. They belong now, to each other and to themselves. In the flurry of flashing cameras and bewildered, clapping Avengers, they belong.

They’ve found their time at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for sticking with me to the end. You guys are the best. <3
> 
> [Follow me on Tumblr](http://starandshield.tumblr.com) for all the sad grandpas you can handle.


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